Science Beyond the Rocky Mountains 179 



acquisition of this tract by the United States, will most likely be 

 the means of greatly adding to our knowledge of the country. 

 Already I learn that an exploring expedition has left for there. 

 To this party, Dr Albert Kellogg, whom I have referred to as an 

 eminent botanist, is attached as surgeon and naturalist ; and we 

 may expect from his researches, much new matter from the in- 

 terior and on the coast, to our knowledge of which, Mertens, Bog- 

 nard, Middendorff, Steller, Escholtz, Chamisso, Beechey, Seeman, 

 and others, have already contributed. 



I close this short and necessarily imperfect review of the present 

 state of science on the Pacific Coast, by apologising to those 

 whom in ignorance I have omitted to mention, as students of 

 science in that broad field, where the harvest is ripe, but the 

 reapers are few. There is still much to be done in these 

 countries in zoology and botany, particularly in the lower orders 

 of plants (Algae, Fungi, Lichens, Hepaticse, Mosses, and Jun- 

 germannise), and animals, and in tracing their geographical dis- 



the last ten years, often in Government employ, in the exploring sur\'eys for rail- 

 road and waggon routes, and as often on his own account as an ardent and skilful 

 naturalist. From 1861 to 1864 he made several explorations in connexion with 

 the Smithsonian Institute, and the Chicago Society of Natural Sciences, as a 

 scientific naturalist, into the most unfrequented portions of the northern domain 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the latter part of this time he made a most 

 adventurous and perilous journey to the head-waters of the Yukkon and Stickeen 

 rivers of Russian-America and forwarded to his friends, through the liberality 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company, an immense number of specimens in every 

 department of natural history. His discoveries in geography and zoology 

 were considered by the learned as of the highest importance ; and the re- 

 ports of the Smithsonian and of the Chicago Academy, are full of the results 

 of his constant and multifarious labours. On the formation of the Russo- 

 American Telegraph Company Expedition, under Col. Bulkeley, his valuable 

 services were immediately secured, and great seems to have been the assist- 

 ance which his experience and eminent talent enabled him to render to that 

 enterprise, in which his whole heart as a naturalist and as a well-wisher to 

 his fellow-men seems to have been concentrated. In the prime of life, and 

 with hosts of friends well earned by indefatigable and unselfish labours in 

 the cause of science and humanity, Robert Kennicott laid his life down, like 

 the brave soldier, at the utmost frontier of the battle-fields of nature. In ten 

 years he had, it may be said, coasted the Arctic shores from Hudson's Bay to one 

 of the remotest points of Russian-America, at the very mouth of Behring's 

 Straits. He had roamed for years amongst the wildest tribes of the Pacific 

 Slope, often where the foot of the white man had never trod within 200 leagues, 

 and there was scarcely any section of our domain which he had not personally 

 examined as a student of nature. 



