13 



HIGHLIGHTS OF BOTANICAL 

 EXPLORATION IN THE NEVV^ V^^ORLD 



Bassett Maguire 



Much of the past thirty years of my life had been spent in botanical ex- 

 ploration. So, when I was invited to write on the subject of exploration, sub- 

 consciously acknowledging my own comprehension of the field, I accepted the 

 invitation with more spontaneous alacrity than thoughtful consideration. 

 Difficulties of presentation immediately appeared as I began to frame my 

 piece. Most shocking to me was my inability to answer the primary ques- 

 tion, what is exploration? 



When Lewis and Clark, and Nuttall traversed the New Land; when St.- 

 Hilaire pushed into the upland plateau of central Brazil; when Schomburgk 

 crossed Guayana from the Atlantic seaboard to the Orinoco and Amazon; 

 certainly these exploits obviously and gloriously represented exploration in 

 the epic and heroic sense. But what of the work and journeys, great and 

 small, of the multitude of men and women whose botanical collections consti- 

 tute the matrix from which the great body of information about natural 

 vegetation comes? Are not their accomplishments to be placed under that 

 somewhat illusive and romantic term "exploration"? Most assuredly so! 

 This paper, then, undertakes to show some of the many facets of exploration 

 rather than to present a roster of explorers or a history of exploration of our 

 time. 



The closing decades of the nineteenth century brought to an end that long 

 period of classic exploration in which the two continents of the Western 

 Hemisphere had been circumscribed, probed, and traversed. Exploration had 

 opened up geography, subdued or pushed aside native peoples, introduced 

 commerce, and, as chief by-product, brought vast quantities of plant speci- 

 mens from virgin territories to the botanical centers of Europe and America. 

 From the materials of historic exploration and the accumulation of innu- 

 merable lesser collections, there were compiled the plant records for the great 

 pioneer floras of country-wide or continental scope. 



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