156 ERYTHEA. 



Kodiak, Prince Williams Sound, Juneau, and Sitka. The party 

 arrived in San Francisco September 14, after most successful 

 three months' journeying. In preparing for the expedition during 

 the six months preceding the departure of it, the members of the 

 party derived invaluable personal assistance from Dr. Geo. David- 

 son, Professor of Geography in the University of California, and 

 formerly assistant in the Geodetic Survey on the Pacific Coast, who 

 possesses most extensive and accurate knowledge of the waters and 

 coasts of Bering Sea. Acknowledgment is also due to the Alaska 

 Commercial Company, to the Pacific Steam Whaling Company, 

 to Captain Downing and Purser Christian, and to the Pacific 

 Coast Steamship Corapan}'. But for the courtesies extended by 

 these companies the expedition would scarcely have been undertaken. 



Mr. Grant Allen, who died recently in London, was born in 

 Canada, educated at Oxford, and appointed principal of the Gov- 

 ernment College in Jamaica, but spent the greater part of his life 

 in England. He was a most versatile writer and became known 

 to all English-speaking botanists. His popular botanical produc- 

 tions, while often devoid of scientific caution and thus exciting the 

 London botanical critic militant, were, neverthelcRs, vivid and pic- 

 tui'esque and very frequently highly suggestive in character. It 

 may surprise many to learn of the range of his activity. He was 

 not only an enthusiastic naturalist but an author of sensational 

 novels and of a continental guide-book, a Radical pamphleteer, a 

 writer of short stories about African millionaires and similar kindred 

 subjects, and he recently issued an edition of White's Selborne. 

 Evolution, however, was his favorite topic, and, whatever else may 

 be said of him, capable judges agree that he has done more than 

 any other contemporary Englishman to popularize in a most lucid 

 manner the work of Huxley and of Darwin. 



During colonial days and the early part of the century, Phila- 

 delphia enjoyed the distinction of being the leading scientific city 

 in America, a prestige which, although lost at a later time, 

 accounts for the long roll of botanists in Dr. Harshberger's thick 

 volume, "The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Work," a title 

 which is made to include Pursh, Nuttall, Rafinesque, and other natu- 



