﻿PLANTAE LINDHEIMERIANAE. 



133 



difficulties, and the accumulated labors of these collectors 

 and students have made known to the world a great part, 

 probably the greater part, of the native flora of the western 

 United States. 



The half-century succeeding the Napoleonic wars was a 

 period of great unrest in Germany. Napoleon's policy had 

 tended to break down the smaller German principalities and 

 to arouse a feeling of resistance and unity among the various 

 political groups speaking the German tongue, while the suc- 

 cess of the French people in their several popular insurrec- 

 tions inspired their neighbors also with the hope of freedom. 

 This desire for political rights and national unity led to the 

 uprising of 1830 and the revolution of 1848, and finally re- 

 sulted in giving the Germans a constitution and a united 

 Fatherland. Yet, while this struggle was going on, there 

 was a large and continuous stream of German emigration, 

 greatly increased after each political disturbance. America 

 received the greater part of these exiles, who settled chiefly 

 about Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati. 



This constant absorption by the Anglo-Saxon race of the 

 strongest and most independent of the German blood finally 

 became a source of solicitude to those who had the good of 

 the Fatherland at heart and led in 1844 to the formation of 

 a company of twenty-five German princes and nobles entitled 

 the "Verein zum Schutzc deutscher Auswanderer in Texas," 

 usually called the Adelsverein or Mainz Company, which had 

 for its object "To conduct the German emigration, as far as 

 possible, to a single favorable selected point, to assist the emi- 

 grant upon his distant journey and in his new home and to 

 work for strength therein, that a new home shall be secured 

 for them beyond the sea;"* the evident intention being to 

 Germanize Texas, then a republic with a small cosmopolitan 

 population, and to keep the emigrants in touch with the 

 Fatherland. 



Prince Carl zu Solms-Braunfels, whose speeches and writ- 



* Roemer, "Texas." 20-41. — Penniger's "Geschichtedes Adelsverein." — 

 Tex. State Hist. Assoc. Quarterly. 3 : 33-40. — Kuno Damian von Schutz, 

 "Texas Rathgeber fUr Auswanderer nach diesem Lande." Wiesbaden. 

 1846. pp. 135-232.— Solms-Braunfels, "Texas." Frankfort. 1846. 



