508 NOTES. 
and for many years the president, of the Essex County Natural 
History Society, which afterwards became part of the Essex Insti- 
tute. He was an active worker in botany, and though he never 
published the results of his labors to any great extent, he has for 
years been considered as an authority in New England crypto- 
gamic botany to which he devoted most of his attention. Of a 
peculiar and retiring nature, he never made himself prominent 
among the scientists of the day, though by those who knew him 
intimately his learning was held in great respect. As a popular 
exponent of botanical subjects he was much appreciated. 
Mr. Grorce Gregs, the distinguished American ethnologist and 
philologist, died at New Haven, on the 9th of April, in his fifty- 
eighth year. Mr. Gibbs, though a lawyer by profession, has been 
an extensive contributor to various departments of natural sci- 
ence, as well as to literature, but his special work since 1849, when . 
he first visited the Pacific coast, has been in researches rela- 
tive to the languages and history of the North American Indians. 
Since this period he has filled several important posts as geologist 
on several of the government surveys and added much to our 
knowledge of the geology and zoology of the western portion of 
our continent. At the time of his death he was engaged in m 
perintending the printing of a quarto volume of the Smithsonian 
Contributions, containing several hundred series of Indian vocab- 
ularies which he had arranged in a most critical manner. We 
understand that this last work of Mr. Gibbs was so far perfected, 
that its completion will be entrusted to Dr. Roehrig who was 
assisting in the work. 
Col. Jonn W. Foster, President of the Chicago Academy of 
Science, died at Chicago on the 29th of June, aged 58. Col. 
Foster, though an active laborer in science for many years, 18 
perhaps best known as the joint author with Prof. Whitney of the 
government Report on the Mineral Lands of Lake Superior, pub- 
lished in 1850, and from his volume on the Mississippi Valley 
published a few years since, though he has contributed many 
papers and memoirs on geological and archæologiċal subjects- 
He contemplated a series of articles on the «Mound builders of 
-the Mississippi Valley” for this magazine, two of which were pub- 
lished, when his time became fully occupied in the preparation of 
~ a more extensive work on the subject, which was issued but a few 
~ weeks before he died. He was one of the original members 
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