258 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



posited in the British Museum an interesting collection of 

 insects, fishes and reptiles many of them new species and 

 some of them named in her honor which testifies to her 

 activity as a collector and her enthusiasm as a naturalist. 



Her brilliant and useful career was cut short in Cape 

 Colony, whither she had gone as an army nurse during the 

 Boer war. In view of her achievements one is not sur- 

 prised to learn that her countrymen regarded her prema- 

 ture taking-off as a national misfortune. The noblest mon- 

 ument to her memory is "The Mary Kingsley Society of 

 West Africa/ 7 whose object is to carry on, as far as may be, 

 the beneficent work she began on the West African coast 

 and to accomplish for English rule in this part of the 

 world what the " Royal Asiatic Society" has achieved for 

 British administration in India. 



Madame Coudreau is designated in Qui Etes-Vous the 

 French Who 's Who as an exploratrice. This well charac- 

 terizes her; for, if not the first woman explorer by pro- 

 fession, she is certainly the most energetic and successful. 



Her first work was in French Guiana, under instructions 

 from the colonial minister of France. This was in 1894. 

 The following year she began the scientific exploration of 

 the province of Para, in northern Brazil, in collaboration 

 with her husband, Henri Coudreau, who had previously 

 distinguished himself by his achievements as a writer and 

 as an explorer in French Guiana. The fruit of their joint 

 work from 1895 to 1899 was six quarto volumes profusely 

 illustrated by photographs which they had taken and by 

 carefully executed charts of the various rivers which they 

 had explored. 



While engaged in the exploration of the Trombetas, a 

 tributary of the Amazon, Henri Coudreau was taken seri- 

 ously ill, and, after a few days ' struggle against the disease 

 with which he was stricken, he expired in the depths of the 

 forest primeval, where he was buried by his desolate and 

 disconsolate widow. After such a calamity any other 



