88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Schweinfurth, all lose the result of years of toil and privation. 

 Humboldt makes three collections, travels with one, never losing 

 sight of it, ships the other two, and both through the fortunes of 

 war are in great part lost. Raffles staggered to his feet after this 

 crushing blow and obtained a second collection with which he 

 sailed to England. Upon his arrival he was not idle. He inter- 

 ested himself in establishing the Zoological Society of London and 

 became its first president. He founded the Museum Rafflesianium, 

 which is composed of specimens of natural history from the Ma- 

 layan Archipelago. He died suddenly in 1826, at the compara- 

 tively early age of forty-five years. 



The career of Raffles is thus briefly outlined. If any one is 

 interested in the subject and looks it up in the Biographical Dic- 

 tionary, the encyclopaedias, or in articles on Java, he will find 

 nothing, or next to nothing, on Raffles^s scientific labors. The in- 

 teresting chapter in Chambers' Miscellany entitled Sir Stamford 

 Raffles and the Spice Islands relates almost entirely to his work 

 as a philanthropist and administrator. Yet his influence on the 

 subject of topography, botany, zoology, ethnology, and archae- 

 ology of the East is as great as are his political ideas. He under- 

 took systematic investigations of Java, Sumatra, and the neigh- 

 boring islands. He encouraged collections to be made by com- 

 petent explorers,* instituted special expeditions for collecting 

 antiquities by which the Hindu influence on the Javanese mythol- 

 ogy, history, and literature was established. He wrote an elab- 

 orate history of the island. Some idea of the comprehensive plan 

 of his labors and of its rich results can be obtained by the esti- 

 mate of the cargo with which he stored his ship on his departure 

 for England. 



We acknowledge the justness of the tribute to Raffles as ex- 



* The Americans who have made impressions in European affairs are naturally very 

 few. The mind in this connection reverts to Ledyard and Count Rumford among scien- 

 tists ; to West, Copley, and Leslie among painters. I infer that few Philadelphians recall 

 that a man trained in their city and a native of Bethlehem, Pa., should be added to the list. 

 I allude to Dr. Thomas Horsfield, the most prominent of the naturalists encouraged by Raf- 

 fles in the exploration of the Malayan Islands under his administration. Horsfield was 

 born in 1*773; he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was gradu- 

 ated in 1*708, writing on Rhus Poisoning, which appears as one of the Medical Theses, edited 

 by Charles Caldwell, Philadelphia, 1805. In no other publication is there to be found so 

 excellent an account of the properties of the American poison vine and poison oak. Im- 

 mediately after graduation Horsfield went to Java, where he remained for twenty years in 

 the service of the East India Company. At the end of this time he was recalled to Lon- 

 don, where he spent the rest of his life as the curator of the museum of the company in 

 Leadenhall Street. He was elected a correspondent of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia in 1826. He was the author of the classical work on Zoological Researches 

 in Java, a separate volume on the rare plants of Java, as well as a special report on the 

 anneUds of the same general region. Dr. Horsfield died in 1859. 



