MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 89 
A CATALOGUE OF THE PLANTS OF MINNESOTA. 
BY I, A. LAPHAM, LL. D., OF MILWAUKEE, WIS.—1865. 
[Nore.—Dr. I. A. Lapham, whose death occurred at Milwaukee 
on the 14th of September, 1875, had been a prominent scientific ob- 
server and writer in the Northwest for more than twenty years. 
While his field was mainly within the State of Wisconsin, of which 
he published an accurate geological map in 1869, he made several 
extended tours of observation in the State of Minnesota, in connec- 
tion both with public and private surveys. He was first to call at- 
tention, in a systematic way, to the remarkable effect of the Great 
Lakes on the climate of the country contiguous to them. A work 
of his on the “ Antiquities of Wisconsin,” was published by the 
Smithsonian Institute in its contributions to knowledge, in 1855. 
Occasional papers of his have appeared from time to time in the 
American Journal of Science and the American Naturalist, on the 
Geology, Archeology, Zoology, Botany and Climatology of the re- 
gion of the Great Lakes. Upon the organization of the present 
geological survey of Wisconsin, he was very wisely and justly ap- 
pointed its director He had contributed so largely to the working 
out of the natural history of the State that the minuteness of his 
acquaintance with it could not he acquired by a stranger in anything 
short of a lifetime. It is lamentable that a short-sighted economy 
refused, two years ago, to publish the results of his labors and of 
his coadjutors, and that his manuscripts, stored in the archives of 
he State, stifled vindicators of his industry and research, are liable 
to be ignored and forgotten in the further prosecution and final 
completion of the work. 
With a generous and cosmopolitan spirit which characterized him 
in his scientific labors, he sent the manuscript of the following cat- 
alogue of the plants of Minnesota to the writer, soon after the ini- 
tiation of the geological survey of the State, without expressing any 
desire as to the disposition that should be made of it. He designed 
it, of course, as a free contribution to the natural history of the 
State of Minnesota, which would be capable of producing more 
good in the possession of the ofticers of our survey than in his own. 
The Board of Regents accepted it with due acknowledgments, and 
would have published it when that branch of the survey should have 
been undertaken. But the death of Dr. Lapham renders it an act 
of justice to the memory of his generous labors to delay its publica- 
tion no further. 
The value of this catalogue to the State of Minnesota cannot be 
estimated—the result of no scientific labor can. ‘To the develop- 
ment of the botany of the State it will add a very great impetus. 
It is the first attempt ever made to make out anything like a com- 
13 
