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tained a great loss in the death of the enthusiastic Bertero. 
Apprehensions, and very serious ones, too, were long enter- 
tained respecting his fate; and information had reached us 
in the early part of the present year (1832), of which later . 
accounts from other correspondents have confirmed the cor- 
rectness, and we, therefore, do not hesitate about giving the 
following extract of a letter from our valued friend, Alexander 
Caldcleugh, Esq. dated St. Jago de Chile, 17th Dec. 1831. 
* I am most sorry,” he says, “ to make known to you the fate of 
poor Bertero. After the voyage which he made with me, last 
year, to the island of Juan Fernandez, where he collected with 
great zeal, and found many interesting things, and some new 
Genera, (amongst them five of the Cichoracea, tolerably large 
trees with hollow stems),—he remained in Valparaiso for 
three months, for the purpose of arranging and despatching 
his plants to Paris, At this time a vessel offered to Tahiti, 
and, led on by that powerful thirst for botanical science, 
which I have no where seen surpassed, he embarked in her, 
and remained ten weeks collecting in that island, and then took 
a passage to return to Valparaiso, with a valuable collection in 
a new Tahitian schooner, which sailed about eleven months 
ago, and has not since been heard of. Such has been the 
result of the inquiries I was induced to make, from the cir- | 
cumstance of my finding no letters lying for me at his agents, 
on my late return to Chili; and I was led to believe that his 
plans were to remain some time longer collecting in this coun- 
try. Hehas left no plants here, and I am sure you will regret 
his loss exceedingly, for had he lived he would have done a 
great deal more to extend our knowledge of the Flora of this 
most interesting portion of South America." 
We have reason to be satisfied, from what has been pub- 
lished by his friends at Paris of some portion of his collec- 
tions (in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles), that the whole 
of them have fallen into good hands; and we are s sure that 
our learned friends, Adrien de Jussieu* aod. a ao jin, , will 
* This most able Botanist, in a a late No. of the ** Missile" has published an 
Account of some new Genera from Bertero's vollections, and though, probably, 
