HISTOET OP BOTANICAL EXPLOKATION. 135 



tions were received from him, the last in 1881, through Dr. Asa Gray, from the 

 neighbourhood of San Luis Potosi, where he resided some time before his death, which 

 occurred two or three years ago. Schaffner was an excellent collector, second to 

 none indeed; moreover he was a good botanist; but in the absence of the indispen- 

 sable literary aids he was unable to determine whether he had a novelty before him 

 or a previously described species, hence he frequently lost the credit due to a 

 discoverer, which was a source of grief and annoyance to him, particularly as, some 

 European botanists ignored the manuscript names he appended to plants that proved 

 to be new. He collected very extensively in the neighbourhood of Mexico, Orizaba, 

 and San Luis Potosi, and most of the leading herbaria in the world have been enriched 

 by his labours. Unfortunately each collection was separately numbered. 



L. C. Ervendberg made a small collection around Wartenberg, near Tantoyuca, in 

 1858 and 1859, and this is the subject of a special article by Dr. Asa Gray *. There is 

 a small set at Kew. 



Sutton Hayes. — A native of New York, who studied medicine, and in 1858 was 

 appointed Assistant-Surgeon to an expedition sent by the United States Government to 

 survey a route for emigrants to the Pacific States, the result of which was the construction 

 of a road from El Paso to Fort Yuma, which occupied two yearsf . During this period 

 Mr. Hayes made good use of the botanical knowledge he acquired during a two years' 

 sojourn in Paris. Symptoms of pulmonary consumption having for some time declared 

 themselves in his constitution, he visited the Isthmus of Panama for the benefit of his 

 health. Upon his arrival there his condition was so serious that it seemed improbable 

 that he could survive more than a few months, but the change to a warmer climate 

 effected such an improvement that his life was prolonged for more than three years ; but 

 he died in the summer of 1863. The tropical vegetation afforded Hayes a rich field of 

 labour and delight, and he explored it with a zeal and perseverance habitual to him, 

 and astonishing to those who knew the infirm state of his health. All that he did for 

 botany was done out of pure love for the subject, and he sustained an enthusiastic 

 interest in it until the last, through all the miseries attending a wasting and painful 

 disease. Kew, especially, benefited by his researches, almost every mail bringing 

 something ; and altogether he added largely to Seemann's published enumeration of 

 the plants of Panama, though his additions had not been recordeabefore they appeared 

 in the present work. 



About the same period Dr. Moritz Wagner travelled and collected in Panama and 

 Costa Rica, and he published various articles on the vegetation of these countries, 

 extracts from which we give elsewhere. We have seen none of his plants. 



* Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, v. p. 174. 

 f Journal of Botany, 1863, p. 254. 



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