BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
Vor. .15, Ne 
PLANTAE AUSTRO-AMERICANAE VII 
DE FESTO SECULARI RICARDI SPRUCEI AMERICA AUSTRALI 
ADVENTU COMMEMORATIO ATQUE DE PLANTIS 
PRINCIPALITER VALLIS AMAZONICIS 
DIVERSAE OBSERVATIONES 
BY 
Ricuarp Evans ScHuutes' 
ONE HUNDRED years ago, on July 12, 1849, Richard 
Spruce arrived in the Amazon Valley to begin his epochal 
botanical explorations in South America. After the 
passage of a century, Spruce’s work remains the most 
complete phytogeographic labor ever carried out in the 
Amazonia. His collections from the Rio Negro basin, 
where, fighting overwhelming odds of sickness, hunger, 
weariness and loneliness, he explored continuously from 
1851 to 1855, have been exceedingly rich in novelties 
and are still yielding new species and varieties to mono- 
graphers. 
Spruce had an uncanny ability at searching out the 
extraordinarily rare endemics which characterize the iso- 
lated caatingas of the Rio Negro. Many have never been 
collected since Spruce’s day, whereas others have been 
appearing sporadically in recent collections from that 
apparently most inexhaustible of areas. 
From September 1947 through July 1948, I explored 
'Botanist, Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engi- 
neering, Agricultural Research Administration, United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture; Research Fellow, Botanical Museum, Harvard 
University. 
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