LEWIS DAVID VON SCHWEINITZ. 



175 



have for many. We owe most of our knowledge of this series 

 of plants to German, Danish, and Swedish investigators. 

 Knowledge that may not be read by him who runs but must 

 be delved for, as is the case with that relating to the fungi 

 and their near allies, seems to have an especial attraction for 

 Northern minds. 



Among his well-deserved honours was the naming after him 

 of Schweinitzia odorata (sweet pinesap), by Stephen Elliott. 

 This is a small plant, found from Maryland southward, and 

 bears a spike of flesh-coloured flowers which exhale the odour 

 of violets. 



A general characterization of the botanist's work can not 

 be given better than in the following words of Walter R. John- 

 son : 



" When we consider the extreme difficulty of the particular 

 departments of botany to which Mr. Schweinitz devoted his 

 chief attention, the prodigious number of facts which he has 

 accumulated, the vast amount of minute and delicate investi- 

 gation demanded by the nature of the objects of his study, the 

 labour of preparing for the press the materials which he had 

 brought together ; when we recollect that, with the exception 

 of Dr. Muhlenburg, of Lancaster, no American botanist had 

 ventured far upon this wide and unexplored dominion of Na- 

 ture, and when we remember that this science was his relaxa- 

 tion, not his profession his occasional pursuit, not his daily 

 duty we are forcibly struck with the high order of his talents 

 for the pursuit of physical science, and can not but regret that 

 more of his time and energies could not have been devoted to 

 this favourite occupation." 



Von Schweinitz bequeathed his collection of plants to the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. It comprised 

 twenty-three thousand species of phanerogams and many thou- 

 sand cryptogams. A large portion of the specimens were from 

 the most remote parts of the world, having been obtained by 

 exchange with American and European explorers. They in- 

 cluded the " Baldwin collection " from Florida, Brazil, and La 

 Plata, which von Schweinitz had bought, and in which he had 

 found three thousand species not before in his herbarium. The 

 examination and .arrangement of these plants had been one of 

 his last scientific labours. 



