OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: JUNE 8, 1869. 135 



which the Austrian government attached to the squadron which was 

 to convey to Rio the Austrian princess, about to become Empress of 

 Brazil. They embarked at Trieste in the spring of 1817 ; and during 

 the ensuing three years these two naturalists, with very moderate 

 means and appliances, made those extended explorations and precious 

 collections which — along with those of Humboldt — form the princi- 

 pal foundation of our knowledge of the natural history of Brazil, espe- 

 cially of the Amazon, which they ascended to within the frontiers of 

 Peru. 



The health of Dr. Spix gave way under the fatigues and exposures 

 of these explorations ; and he died a few years after his return to' 

 Europe, shortly after the commencement of the publication of the ex- 

 tended series of works destined to record the results of the expedition. 

 The whole burden now fell upon Dr. Martius, with such assistance as 

 he could command from his pupils or others. For the ichthyological 

 collection he called upon a young zoologist, then a student at Munich, 

 now our own colleague, who thus made his first essay in the study of the 

 natural productions of that vast stream which he was destined person- 

 ally to explore, many years afterwards, under better than regal aus- 

 pices. The second and third volumes of the Reise in Brasilien, which 

 will compare favorably with Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and 

 the great Atlas, were entirely by Martius. For the Nova Genera et 

 Species Plantarum Brasiliensiiim, he had the assistance of Zuccarini 

 only in the first volume. This work forms an epoch in botanical illus- 

 tration, not only for the completeness and excellence of the analyses, 

 but also as the earliest application to this purpose of the newly in- 

 vented art of engraving upon lithographic stone. 



His greatest work — one specially adapted to the author's genius 

 and multifarious learning, and without doubt the most sumptuous 

 and elaborate of all botanical monographs — is the ffistoria Palmarum, 

 in three elephant-folio volumes, and containing two hundred and forty- 

 five plates. Begun in view of the Brazilian species merely, it was 

 soon expanded to embrace the whole noble family of Palms through- 

 out the world ; and its completion in 1850, crowning eighteen years of 

 labor, inseparably and for all time connects the name of Martius with 

 these princes of the vegetable kingdom, as Linnaaus aptly terms them. 

 While this last work was still in progress, and after some essays in 

 a humbler form, Von Martius planned, and in the year 1840 com- 

 menced the publication of, the folio Flora Brasiliensis, — the grandest 



