404 CHARLES MOHR 



while crossing the Plains, and after he had given up the search 

 for gold on account of ill health and was on his way to the East 

 again, he was robbed of another at Panama. This last mishap 

 was especially unfortunate, for Dr. Mohr was one of the earliest 

 botanists to explore central California. To him personally the 

 whole venture had serious consequences, for the passage of the 

 Isthmus brought a return of his illness and the permanent im- 

 pairment of his health. After trying farming in Indiana and 

 the drug business in Louisville, Kentucky, continued illness 

 forced him to go South. Louisville and Mexico both failed to 

 give him the relief he sought ; but in 1857 he found a favorable 

 climate in Mobile, Alabama, where he settled and established a 

 prosperous drug business. 



His residence at Mobile was of great value to the scientific 

 world, for he found time to study the resources of the region as 

 no one else has done. His published papers are numerous, and 

 much of his work is of great practical value. His botanical 

 researches were extensive and comprised studies of all the in- 

 digenous and exotic plants of Alabama. He made a special 

 study of the useful foreign plants acclimated in the Gulf States 

 and published an account of them. In addition to these studies 

 he investigated, in the interest of agriculture, the chemical 

 values of wood ashes, pine straw, and other forest products. 

 He also studied the geology of Alabama from an economic 

 standpoint. 



Branching out from botanical and geological work. Dr. Mohr 

 took up the economic study of Southern forests. 



He made large collections of commercial wood specimens and 

 forest products which were installed at various State expositions. 

 He contributed largely both to the Jesup wood collection of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, New York City, and to 

 the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. He collected 

 and arranged the agricultural, forest and mineral exhibits at the 

 World's Exposition in New Orleans in 1884. He supplied much 

 valuable material concerning the distribution, commercial yield 

 and uses of Southern timber trees, for the special report upon 

 the forests of the United States included in V"ol. IX of the 

 Tenth Census. 



