LEO LKSQUEREDX. 321 



few leisure hours to the study of plants, especially mosses, and, later, 

 when a prize was offered by the government tor the best essay 

 on the formation and preservation of peat, he interested himself in 

 making observations on this question, and competed successfully for 

 the prize. In 1845 he was commissioned by the Prussian government 

 to explore the peat-bogs of Northern Europe. But political compli- 

 cations now arose which affected the rest of his life. In 1848, the 

 Canton of Neuchatel, which had hitherto been under the dominion 

 of Prussia, revolted, and joined the Swiss Federation. Lesquereux 

 very naturally, considering the relations of his wife with the court of 

 Saxe- Weimar, was a conservative, and, on the change of government, 

 lost the position to which he had recently been aj)pointed. In this 

 emergency he was tempted to follow in the footsteps of his old school- 

 mate, Arnold Guyot, and his friend, Louis Agassiz ; and, taking with 

 him his wife and three children, he emigrated to America m 1848. 



He went first to Cambridge, where he met his friend Agassiz, and 

 obtained employment for a short time in assisting Asa Gray at the 

 Herbarium. The botanist Sullivant, being m need of some one to aid 

 him in his work on North American mosses, Lesquereux started for 

 Columbus, Ohio, and became at once the assistant and intimate friend 

 of Sullivant. He has left a most interesting account of his life at this 

 period in a series of five letters, entitled " Lettres ecrites d'Amerique," 

 published in the " Revue Suisse " of Neuchatel, 1849-50, in which he 

 gave a full account of his own experience and impressions for the bene- 

 fit of those who proposed emigrating to America, describing in a graphic 

 way the trials of his family when crossing the ocean in the steerage, 

 and the perplexities of a deaf man who could not speak English while 

 travelling from Buffalo to Sandusky by boat on his way to Columbus. 

 The letters are written in a charming style, with the vivacity almost 

 peculiar to the French language, and they are full of amusing attempts 

 to explain the incongruities of the American character as seen by a 

 European, its seriousness and earnestness, on the one hand, contrasted 

 with its disregard of social conventionalities and its political extrava- 

 gances, on the other hand. 



Lesquereux was fortunate in finding in Sullivant, not only a well 

 informed botanist, but also a cultured gentleman of abundant means, 

 which he was ready to spend in the advancement of his favorite 

 studies. The two botanists worked harmoniously together until the 

 death of Sullivant in 1873. Lesquereux was sent by Sullivant to 

 collect mosses in the Southern States, and they together issued the 

 first series of Musci Exsiccati in 1856, under the title of " Musci 



VOL. XXV. (n. S. XVII ) 21 



