SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 113 



The glass houses at Kew are extensive structures. The Win- 

 ter Garden covers more than an acre and a half of ground. The 

 Palm House is three hundred and sixty-two feet long and one hun- 

 dred feet wide. The new Orchid House is one hundred and forty 

 feet in length, adding the two wings together. This last is not 

 wholly satisfactory — to the orchid enthusiast an orchid house 

 never is, nor can be. Supplemented, however, by a low, neat 

 range, from which the public is excluded, nearly all the 1,400 spe- 

 cies which form the national collection thrive admirably. British 

 orchidists are proud of Kew — nowadays — for it was not so satis- 

 factory in this department a few years since. 



+•» 



SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 



MR. SCHOOLCRAFT was a conspicuous figure in the scien- 

 tific life of the early part of the century. A pioneer in 

 some fields, the immediate follower of the pioneers in others, 

 he was, in all the branches of research to which, he gave atten- 

 tion, earnest, ready, diligent, sagacious, original, and modest. As 

 among his titles to be remembered, the biographer who prefaces 

 his Personal Memoirs names the early period at which he entered 

 the field of observation in the United States as a naturalist ; the 

 enterprise he manifested in exploring the geography and geology 

 of the Great West ; and his subsequent researches as an ethnolo- 

 gist in investigating the Indian languages and history. " To him 

 we are indebted for our first accounts of the geological constitu- 

 tion and the mineral wealth and resources of the great valley 

 beyond the Alleghanies, and he is the discoverer of the actual 

 source of the Mississippi River in Itasca Lake. For many years, 

 beginning with 1817, he stirred up a zeal for natural history from 

 one end of the land to the other, and, after his settlement in the 

 West, he was a point of approach for correspondents " — on these 

 topics and for all the Indian tribes. 



Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was born in Albany County, K Y., 

 March 28, 1793, and died in Washington, D. C, December 10, 1864. 

 He was the descendant, in the third generation, of an English- 

 man, James Calcraft, who, having served with credit in the armies 

 of the Duke of Marlborough, came to America in the reign of 

 George II, in the military service, and was present at operations 

 connected with the building of Forts Anne, Edward, and William 

 Henry. After these campaigns he settled in Albany County as a 

 land-surveyor, married, and in his old age conducted a large 

 school — the first English school that was taught in that frontier 

 region. In connection with this incident his name became 



TOL. XXXYII. — 9 



