AN ANNOTATED TRANSLATION OF THE PART OF 

 SCHWEINITZ'S TWO PAPERS^ GIVING THE 

 • RUSTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



By J. C. ARTHUR and G. R. BISBY. 

 {Read April 13, 19 17.) 



Lewis David von Schweinitz was elected to membership in the 

 American Philosophical Society in 1817, one hundred years ago. 

 He was at the time a resident of Salem, North Carolina, a talented 

 man of forceful character, secretary of the Moravian Missions of 

 North America, and with one important botanical work to his credit. 

 In 1805 there had been published in Leipzig a volume describing the 

 fungi about Niesky,- a town of Saxony (later of Prussia), being the 

 joint product of teacher and pupil during Schweinitz's four years' 

 college course. The plates of the volume, with more than a hundred 

 figures, were drawn, engraved and colored by Schweinitz, and much 

 of the text bears the impress of his labor and judgment. 



After five years of college teaching subsequent to his gradua- 

 tion, and five additional years in the ministry, he returned to 

 America as general agent of the Moravian church in the Southern 

 States, and became the pioneer mycologist of the New World. He 

 was the only mycologist in the United States who added materially 

 to the literature of mycology during the half century following his 

 recognition by the American Philosophical Society. His magnus 

 opus, which was truly a colossal work for the times, no less a work 

 than a systematic account of the known fungi of North America, 



1 The papers referred to are the following: 



" Synopsis fungorum Carolinas superioris secundum observationes," 

 Schriften Nat. Ges., Leipzig, 1 : 20-131. 1822. The rusts on pp. 65-75. 



" Synopsis fungorum in America Boreali media degentium secundum ob- 

 servationes," Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc, II, 4: 141-316. 1832. The rusts on 

 pp. 208, 209, 290-297, 306-314. 



~ Albertini & Schweinitz, " Conspectus fungorum in Lusatiae superioris 

 agro Niskiensi crescentium," pp. 376, pi. col. 12. Lipsise, 1805. 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. LVII. M, JULY l6, I9I8. 



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