4 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



Captain Nathaniel Wyeth, setting out from Independence, Missouri, on April 28, 

 1834, as members of an original party of seventy men with 250 horses. The 

 Townsend narrative, a model of forthright reporting and a treasure for the 

 serious student of the American West, makes some mention of the events of a 

 botanical and ornithological nature along the way, and gives us concrete evidence 

 of the devotion of Nuttall to science. Finally Nuttall returned 'round the Horn 

 in 1836 but To^vnsend remained another year on the Coast. Both of their collec- 

 tions ultimately reached Philadelphia, Nuttall dividing his plant specimens be- 

 tween the Philadelphia Academy and his personal herbarium, which ultimately 

 came to rest at the British Museum (Natural History). Audubon purchased 

 Townsend 's bird skins and enriched his own ornithological writings thereby. 

 Nuttall "raised himself from a penniless orphan to a highly respected man of 

 science," joining the era of B. S. Barton, his one-time patron, with that of Asa 

 Gray and Elias Durand. Nuttall's travels in America have been delineated by 

 Pennell with documentation, and his California visit has been fraternally told 

 by Jepson. 



The London Horticultural Society, which first sponsored David Douglas in 

 America, sent twenty-four-year-old Karl Theodore Hartweg, of Karlsruhe, to 

 Mexico in 1836, and to California in 1846. He arrived in Monterey on June 7 

 and proceeded north to San Francisco and Chico late that year. His plant col- 

 lections in the northern Sierra Nevada were particularly valuable. Hartweg's 

 botanical collections fared better than most in that the British systematist George 

 Bentham handled them and published a commentary upon them entitled Plantae 

 Hartivegianae. Hartweg's companion on his visit to Bear Valley in the Sierra 

 Nevada was Theodor Cordua, "pioneer of New Mecklenburg," whose account of 

 the trip has recently been translated. 



The French frigate La Vhius, under command of Admiral Abel du Petit- 

 Thouars, arrived at Monterey, October 18, 1837, and departed November 14. 

 Both zoological and botanical collections were made then and a description of the 

 California visit appears in Thouars' Voyage autour du monde sur la frigate "La 

 Venus" (Paris, 1840-1843, 2 : 77-142). The surgeon on the La Venus was Adolphe 

 Simon Neboux, who most likely made the natural history collections. A dexterous 

 piece of detective work involving this French expedition is John Thomas Howell's 

 story "Sea-gulls and Tarweeds: a Distributional Mix-up" (Leafl. West. Bot., 

 1:189-191, 1935.). 



Richard Brinsley Hinds, surgeon on H.M.S. Sulphur, visited the California 

 coast in 1836 and 1839. Hinds was assisted by Barclay and Dr. Sinclair. Their 

 collections on the coast of Baja California were particularly important. Captain 

 Edward Belcher's narrative (London, 1843) contains Hind's report on the 

 "Regions of vegetation ... of the globe in connexion with climate and physical 

 agents," a rather commonly overlooked essay of considerable interest for the 

 plant geographer. 



The six ships that set sail as the United States Exploring Expedition — our 

 first Government expedition — under Captain Charles Wilkes on August 18, 1838, 

 carried six scientists. (There had not been such a concentration since the "Boat- 

 load of Knowledge" set off down the Ohio for New Harmony!) The six scientists 

 with Wilkes' Expedition were : Pickering, Brackenridge, Couthouy, J. D. Dana, 

 Titian Peale, and William Rich. The expedition was surveying the Pacific Coast 



