386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



well as the physique of the masses in large towns is undergoing already 

 retrograde changes ; and that the present condition fills the minds of 

 observers of social progress with gloomy forebodings as to the future. 

 The progress of civilization has endowed us with a measure of self-con- 

 trol, has tended to subordinate the unit of the mass — to encourage the 

 evolution of the citizen as compared to the mere individual. The effect 

 of alcoholic indulgence to excess is to institute retrogressive changes, 

 and to undo, to a great extent, what civilization has slowly achieved. — 

 Sanitary Becorcl. 



SKETCH OF GUSTAY WALLIS. 



aUSTAV WALLIS, the indefatigable traveler and botanist, whose 

 death at Cuenca, Ecuador, we recently announced, was born 

 May 1, 1830, at LUneburg, Prussia, where his father was an advocate 

 and proctor of the superior court. He died at the early age of forty- 

 eight years, of which the last eighteen were spent in incessant travel 

 and research. We have not been able to learn any particulars concern- 

 ing the early life of this distinguished traveler, for the compilers of 

 biographical dictionaries have utterly ignored the man whose merit is 

 simply that he has enriched horticulture with no less than one thousand 

 new species. And here we may remark that works of the class just 

 named are as a rule singularly neglectful of the representatives of sci- 

 ence : while every divine and politician that rises ever so little above the 

 average of his class is mentioned, scientific men whose fame is world- 

 wide are passed by in silence. For the biographical items contained 

 in the present sketch we gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to 

 our German contemporary, Die Natur, in which is published a brief 

 but appreciative memoir of Wallis by his friend Dr. Karl Mliller, editor 

 of that very able magazine. 



Wallis's travels in quest of botanical rarities began in 18G0, his first 

 field of labor being the same which, with the exception of two years, 

 engaged his attention down to the day of his death — tropical America. 

 In that year we find him exploring the banks of the Lower Amazon and 

 a few of its principal tributaries, the Tapajos, Madeira, Purus, etc. In 

 1863, quitting the course of the great stream, he made an excursion 

 northward, crossing the Rio Negro and the Rio Branco and penetrating 

 to the Sierra Parima on the southern frontier of Venezuela, in longitude 

 west 64°, and nearly under the equator. Returning to the Amazon, he 

 explored the left bank for some distance up-stream ; then swimming 

 across the river, he followed the right bank westward into Peru and 

 Ecuador, crossing the Cordilleras, and in 1866 arriving at the city of 

 Guayaquil. Here he took ship for the port of Buenaventura in the 



