SKETCH OF ROBERT HARE. 699 



Reply to Matter is Heavy, as demonstrated by W. Whewell ; 

 on meteorological topics — storms of the Atlantic coast; reviews 

 of Redfield's theory of storms and of Dove's essay on storms ; an 

 account of a storm or tornado in Rhode Island, August, 1838, 

 " and others " ; on Causes of Storm, Tornado, and Water-spout ; 

 among accounts of experiments and new methods — blasting rocks 

 by galvanic ignition ; apparatus for producing ebullition by cold ; 

 process for fulminating powder, consisting of cyanogen and cal- 

 cium ; mode of obtaining the specific gravity of gases ; analysis 

 of gaseous mixtures ; method of dividing glass by friction ; and 

 apparatus for decomposition and recomposition of water. He 

 was also author of a Brief View of the Policy and Resources of 

 the United States (1810) ; Chemical Apparatus and Manipulations 

 (1836) ; Compendium of the Course of Chemical Instruction in the 

 Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania (1840) ; 

 Memoir on the Explosiveness of Niter (1850) ; and Spiritualism 

 Scientifically Demonstrated (1855). 



He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 

 ences and of the American Philosophical Society, and was one of 

 the few life-members of the Smithsonian Institution. 



In his geological explorations of the basin of the Red River of the North 

 through six seasons, Mr. Warren Upbam has paid careful attention to the geo- 

 graphic limits and relative abundance of both native and introduced plants. "It 

 has been interesting," he says, " to find there the intermingling and the bounda- 

 ries of species whose principal homes, or geographic range, lie respectively in the 

 direction of the four cardinal points, east and west, and south and north." After 

 describing this diversified vegetation in detail, the author concludes that besides 

 the greater part of our flora which is of northern origin, coming to us from an 

 ancestral flora that probably in the beginning of the Quaternary period occupied 

 continuous land around the globe in high northern latitudes, the plants of the 

 Red River basin include many species derived, as Gray and Watson have shown 

 for a large portion of the flora of California, the Great Basin, and the southern 

 Rocky Mountain region, from the plateau vegetation of Mexico. By the return 

 of a warmer and drier climate in the southwestern United States, following the 

 Ice age of the North, our cactus species, petalostemons, and onagraceas, many of 

 our composite, the milkweeds, and many more, have been enabled to spread from 

 their original Southwestern and Mexican home-land, becoming a most important 

 element of the flora of all the plains and prairie region to the Saskatchewan and 

 Red Rivers, and gaining a less numerous representation in the wooded country east 

 to the Atlantic coast. How these Northern and Southwestern floras have become 

 intermingled, the geographic limits of separate species, and the gradual changes 

 observable in the specific characters of some of our plants in passing between dis- 

 tant parts of their range, are themes of sufficient interest to repay the careful ob- 

 servations of amateur botanists in all parts of our country. In these directions 

 important additions to botanic science may be made by many who have neither 

 leisure nor ability for valuable biologic study of plants, but who love the search 

 for wild flowers. 



