8 The American Geologist. January, 1894 
bers, but only slumbers, for it is so palpably an enterprise of 
national utility that it will not be allowed to die. The result 
of Dr. Lapham's labor was a manuscript descriptive catalogue 
of the known species of Graminea? of the United States, still 
unpublished, though preserved among his archives by his 
children. It is accompanied by numerous elegant plates of 
drawings of the flowers and fructification, in pursuance of the 
plan outlined when the work was authorized by Congress. 
Dr. Lapham contributed numerous papers to the Transac- 
tions of the Wisconsin Agricultural Society on the plants and 
trees of the state. In 1867 the Legislature ordered an in- 
quiry into "the injurious effect of clearing land of forests, and 
the duty of the state in the matter." Dr. Lapham was ap- 
pointed chairman of the Committee. He made an exhaustive 
report, which the Legislature printed as an octavo volume of 
over one hundred closely printed pages. This neglected vol- 
ume, from which, as from a botanical cyclopedic thesaurus, a 
class of economic foresters and agricultural writers have for 
many }^ears drawn exact knowledge concerning the effect of 
forests on the face of the country, on the climate, on the rain- 
fall, on the healthfulness, the habitability, the productiveness 
and the aggregate value of the primeval country, attests the 
extended research and the sound, practical good sense which 
its author pre-eminently manifested in all his investigations. 
Dr. Asa Gray testified to the reliability of Lapham's botanical 
observations. He used Lapham's catalogue in determining 
the geographic distribution of western plants. He dedicated 
a new genus to Lapham, found in our southwestern frontiers 
(Laphamia), to which Dr. Gray assigned five species, and 
urged, after Lapham's death, that the herbarium which he had 
collected should be made the basis of a botanical museum, 
where it could be preserved permanently as a state or munici- 
pal memorial to one of the honored founders of the common- 
wealth of Wisconsin. 
Dr. Lapham made a botanical excursion into Minnesota, ex- 
tending his notes and collections entirely across the state, and 
to the valley of the Red river of the North. It was in con- 
nection with an ill-starred and futile attempt on the part of 
some speculating capitalists of Milwaukee to found a city in 
northwestern Minnesota that Lapham was induced to take 
