Botanical work of Dr. E W. Hilgard 
RotanD M. HARPER 
Dr. Eugene Woldemar Hilgard, who was born in Zweibriicken, 
Bavaria, January 5, 1833, and died in Berkeley, California, three 
days after his eighty-third birthday, was a shining example of a 
versatile type of scientist, common in the nineteenth century but 
becoming scarce in these days of increasing specialization. He was 
best known as a soil investigator and agronomist, but also ranked 
high as a geologist and chemist, and was pretty well versed in 
systematic and geographical botany. He was one of the pioneers 
in the correlation of soils with vegetation in America, and always 
emphasized the importance of native vegetation as an indicator of 
the productivity of soils. The fact that the scientific study of 
soils is almost inseparable from that of plant ecology was more 
fully appreciated by him than by most American soil investi- 
gators now living (some of whom seem to have little or no bo- 
tanical training, if one may judge by their writings). 
His first contribution to botanical science washis 415-pagereport 
on the geology and agriculture of Mississippi, published in 1860. 
In that the soils and vegetation of theseveral geographical divisions 
of the state (except the alluvium of the Mississippi River) were 
described in considerable detail, and it was at the time and for 
years afterward the best account of Mississippi vegetation in 
existence. As it was written before thé publication of Chapman's 
Flora of the Southern United States, when there were no very 
satisfactory manuals for that part of the country (the best avail- 
able being Darby’s), some of the plants were wrongly identified, 
but a reader familiar with the southern flora can easily make the 
necessary corrections for himself. 
A somewhat similar treatment was employed in a 44-page 
pamphlet on a geological reconnaissance of Louisiana, published 
in New Orleans in 1869, and in his descriptions of Mississippi, 
Louisiana and California, in the fifth and sixth volumes of the 
Tenth Census (1884), which have never received the attention 
from botanists that they deserve. 
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