HIGHLIGHTS OF BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN THE NEW WORLD 223 



author, based primarily on the large collection of Mexican plants housed at 

 the U.S. National Herbarium. 



In southern Mexico and neighboring Guatemala and British Honduras, 

 numerous collectors, of whom the more prominent have been INIillspaugh, 

 Schipp, Lundell, Stevenson, Bartlett, Gentle, Gentry, Paul H. Allen, and 

 L. O. Williams, were active in the field, mostly between 1895 and 1940. 



At the turn of the century in 1895, C. F. Millspaugh collected in Yucatan. 

 The botanical report, under the title "Contribution to the Flora of Yucatan," 

 was issued as Field Columbian Mus. Pub. Nos. 4, 15, 25, 69, and 92, 1895- 

 1904. 



Under the stimulus and leadership of H. H. Bartlett and C. L. Lundell, a 

 series of botanical explorations into parts of the Yucatan Peninsula, northern 

 Honduras, and adjacent Mexico, undertaken chiefly during the years 1928- 

 1936, has been published upon in a series of botanical papers under the title 

 "Botany of the Maya Area" {Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 461, 1936; No. 

 522, 1940) ; "Vegetation of Peten," C. L. Lundell {Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. 

 No. 478, 1937). H. S. Gentry collected in the valley of the Mayo River, 

 Sonora, 1933-1939, spending a total of more than twenty-seven months in 

 the field collecting "3200 numbers, representing 1276 species and varieties, 

 of which 90 have already been detected as new," published in his "Rio Mayo 

 Plants" {Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 527, 1942). 



No field men have been more vigorously active in Central America than 

 P. C. Standley (7500 field numbers in the Canal region alone) and his asso- 

 ciate and successor in the field, Julian \. Steyermark. The numbers of collec- 

 tions made by these two men exceed by far those obtained by any other 

 American botanist. From 1923 to 1950 Standley carried on intensive field 

 work in Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nica- 

 ragua. He returned to Honduras in 1950, where he is now pleasantly and 

 comfortably living out the later years of his life. 



Account of the natural history of the region of the Isthmus reaches 

 farther back into history than that for any other part of the New World 

 (see introduction, Flora of the Panama Canal Zone, P. C. Standley, 1928). 

 Oviedo, who between 1513 and 1529 spent much time in Panama, wrote 

 extensively about the natural wealth of Central x\merica in his Historia 

 general y natural de las Indias, finally published in Madrid in 1851-1855. 



Significant early contributions to the flora of the region were made by 

 Barclay and Sinclair (1837), who were attached to the British ship Sulphur; 

 and Seemann who was naturalist on the British ship Herald. Seemann's 

 plants (1848-1849), deposited at Kew, are the most important of the early 

 collections from the general region of Panama. Fendler, who earlier col- 

 lected in the southwestern United States and later in Venezuela, made valu- 

 able Panama collections in 1849-1850. 



