INTRODUCTION. XV 



awarded to Welwitscli by the Commissioners of tbe Exhibition 

 in respect of these exhibits. He at once commenced in Lisbon 

 the critical examination of his African herbarium ; but he soon 

 discovered that the complete study of the collections, which he 

 reckoned in the botanical section alone to embrace more than 

 8000 objects, required comparison to be made with analogous 

 collections in the museums of other countries, and that he shovild 

 be obliged to ti-avel outside the kingdom for such assistance. On 

 the 1st July 1862 Welwitsch was admitted as an Associate of 

 " Pollichia," a Rhineland natural history society. He had pre- 

 viously, on the 2nd December 1858, been elected an Associate of 

 the Linnean Society of London, and on the 4th November 1859 

 a Foreign Coi-responding Fellow of the Eoyal Academy of Science 

 of Lisbon. His subsequent honours of this kind were : 1864, 

 5th January, Associate of the Imperial Zoological and Botanical 

 Society of Vienna; 11th December, Corresponding Member of the 

 Imperial Natural Science Society of Cherbourg; 1865, 4th May, 

 Fellow of the Linnean Society of London; 1866, 11th January, 

 Foreign Member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh; and 

 1869, 1st January, Member of the Acad. Ctesar. Nat. Cur., under 

 the cognomen of Brotero. 



After visiting the International Exhibition of 1862, he obtained 

 by decree of the 22nd July 1863 the necessary permission from the 

 Portuguese Government "to go to England and other northern 

 countries to finish several studies necessary for the publication of 

 the results of his exploration in Angola," with a salary of £2 

 daily to be paid monthly to him in London. Accordingly, after 

 attending to the packing of the collections, he left Lisbon on the 

 15th October 1863, and reached London on the 20th. Some idea of 

 the bulk of the collections may be formed from the official decree 

 of the 3rd November, in which the Portuguese Government 

 mention 42 packages, each 3 ft. 4^ in. long, 1 ft. 6 in. high, and 

 1 ft. 6 in. wide, equivalent to about 319 cubic feet. It has been 

 estimated that these collections contained upwards of 5000 species 

 of plants and 3000 species of insects and animals, a very large 

 proportion of which were wholly new to science ; and of most of 

 these he had numerous specimens. He at once made it the one 

 object of the remaining part of his life to determine and arrange 

 these enormous collections ; he was completely absorbed in this 

 occupation, and rarely talked on any other subject. In further- 

 ance of the same object he had a very large correspondence with 

 English and foreign botanists and naturalists, among others with 

 H. G. Peichenbach of Hamburg about oi-chids, with Duby of 

 Geneva about mosses, with Mliller of Geneva about Euphorbiaceae, 

 with Seemann about Bignoniacese, with Felder of Vienna about 

 butterflies, with Andrew Murray about Coleoptera, with Hegel- 

 maier of Tubingen about Lemnacere, with Morelet of Lyons about 

 Mollusca, with Alexander Bi'aun about Characese, with H. Schott 

 about Aroidea?, with D. Oliver about Lentibulariese, with W. J. 

 Hooker about ferns, with Alph. de Candelle about Campanulacea', 



