EDITOR'S PREFACE. 15 



collection of Dakota Group plants entirely at iiiy disposal. I am also under 

 obligation to numerous collectors and students throughout the country 

 who have, by contributing either si^ecimeus or valuable information, com- 

 bined to make the flora of the Dakota Group one of the most thoroughly 

 known fossil floras of the world. 



I take this opportunity of appending here a short account of Prof 

 Lesquereux's life and work. 



LEO LESQUEREUX. 



Leo Lesquereux, the Nestor of American paleobotanists, died at his 

 home in Columbus, Ohio, October 25, 1889. His life, while exceedingly 

 varied and filled with hardships and disappointments, was a singularly pure 

 and noble one, and America lost by his death not only her most distin- 

 guished vegetable paleontologist, but her foremost bryologist, and the few 

 who enjoyed the honor of his personal acquaintance lost a genial companion, 

 a kindly critic, and a sympathetic friend. He was the last of the distin- 

 guished trio — Agassiz, Guyot, Lesquereux — which the Geneva Revolu- 

 tionary Council of 1848 by its edict suppressing the Academy of Neuchatel 

 sent to our shores. These men, "born in the heart of Switzerland's moun- 

 tain grandeur," early imbibed that love of nature winch was ever the 

 actuating impulse of their lives. The departments of science which they 

 so assiduously studied would be comparatively incomplete but for their 

 untiring efl"orts. 



Lesquereux was an exceedingly modest and retiring man. The early 

 misfortune of the loss of his hearing made communication and intercourse 

 so difficult that he rarely ventured from home, and those who knew him 

 best knew him only thi'ough the medium of correspondence. As he once 

 said: "My associations have been almost all of a scientific nature. I have 

 lived with Nature, the rocks, the trees, the flowers. They know me ; I 

 know them. All outside are dead to me." 13ut in spite of this drawback 

 and of the changes that it necessitated in his life he bore it cheerfully and 

 uncomplainingly. 



Several excellent accounts of Lesquereux's life have appeared, written 

 by personal friends and companions, but by the courtesy of Prof. Lester F. 

 Ward I am able to reproduce here a short autobiographic letter, written in 

 response to a request, in which the chief incidents of his life are related in 

 his own modest, quaint language: 



