1890.] "5- [Lesley. 



principles, which wore expressed in his communion with the Protestant 

 Episcopal Church. 



In liis profession he was behind none of the leaders of the bar, for Mr. 

 Gowen ranked among the great lawyers of the country. 



His last, or among the latest of his professional achievements, was 

 the decision (March 20, 1890), of the Supreme Court of Ohio, in the case 

 of Rice against the railroads under the Inter-State Commerce Law. 



Had Mr. Gowen been tempted by the inducements held out to him to 

 enter political life, he would have attained the distinction of a statesman 

 in that high order of men who made their mark in their time on our history. 

 His extraordinary capacity for orally expressing his opinions, his com- 

 mand of language, his wonderful memory, not needing the aid of written 

 notes to direct the course of his argument, the attraction of his manner 

 and his personal presence would have established his position as an 

 orator. 



Less than is here said would have been an injustice to the memory of our 

 lamented colleague. It is at best but a tentative effort, and when the color of 

 the perspective round the prominent figure, which Mr. Gowen became in 

 the circle of the physical scientists of his day, is mellowed by age, then 

 his biography will be the just tribute to his phenomenal character. 



Obituary Notice of Leo Lesquereux. By J. P. Lesley. 

 (Bead before the American Philosophical Society, March 21, 1S90. ) 



The venerable botanist and palseo-botanist, Leo Lesquereux, of Fleurier, 

 Switzerland, late of Columbus, Ohio, has been a member of this Society 

 since his election. January 18, 1861. Born in 1806, and dying on the 20th 

 of October, 1889, his long life was full of unusual adventures, and great 

 discoveries. 



When a boy, on one of his excursions to find new flowers, he fell from 

 the top of the mountain which w T alls the Val de Travers on the north. 

 Rolling and dropping from cliff to cliff, a descent of several hundred feet, 

 he was found by his family hanging in the branches of a tree, mangled 

 in every part of his body, and apparently dead ; but after lying insensible 

 for several weeks, he recovered health and strength, and continued his 

 boyish explorations as though nothing had happened. The place is in full 

 view of his father's house in Fleurier, and is pointed to by the villagers 

 as Lesquereux's cliff. Just below it to the right the Pontarlier Railway 

 line from Neufchatel to Paris, leaves' the Val de Travers and enters the 

 gate-like gorge across which the Swiss stretched their iron chain to keep 

 the marauding Burgundians in check. 



This gorge is similar in its general features to that of our Lehigh river 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVIII. 132. I. PRINTED MAY 10, 1890. 



