Increase Allen Lapham. — Winchell. {> 
charge of an expedition from St. Cloud across the uninhabited 
tracts westward to the objective point, which was about four- 
miles southwest of the present city of Fergus Falls, in Otter 
Tail county. In the midst of the perplexing duties which 
fell upon him, and notwithstanding the harassing failures that 
constantly attended the enterprise, Dr. Lapham succeeded in 
collecting a large herbarium of this region, and he made a 
very full catalogue of all species which he saw, with notes of 
hahitat and distribution. With characteristic generosity and 
cosmopolitan love for science he donated this catalogue to the 
Minnesota survey in 1873. It was published in 1N75,* and 
was the first systematic attempt to classify the flora of the 
state with any noteworthy degree of success. 
Although Dr. Lapham was notable in the later years of hi* 
life to devote so much time to his favorite science, yet in one 
of the latest of his scientific papers he reverts to his first 
love, and dedicates to botany one of the ripest results of a life 
of scientific study. The thought embodied in "The Law of 
embryonic development, the same in plants as in animals."" 
(American Naturalist, Vol. IX, May, L875,) is based on a pro- 
found knowledge of organic development. He attempts ••to 
show that the same law of resemblance, between the immature 
of one order and the mature of a lower order of animals, is 
equally true in the vegetable world, where its study may lead 
to results of equal importance. ,7 f He compares some of the 
low vegetable forms, such as the desmids, consisting of a 
single cell which never develops to anything higher than a 
desmid, though manifesting the essential functions of a per- 
fect plant, to the fovilla of a pollen-grain from the stamen of 
some of the higher phsenogams. Next higher be mentions the 
minute one-celled Protococcus packed with minute particles, 
each one, under favorable circumstances, destined to become 
an independent plant. This still further simulates the pollen- 
grain which, under favorable circumstances (as falling upon 
the stigma), also sends downward a growth which performs 
the office <>f originating a new plant. Fungi, still higher, 
*A catalogue of the plants of Minnesota. Prepared in 1866 by I. A 
Lapham. Trans. Minn. State Hort. Soc, 187.~>. 
fWisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Vol. in, 1875, pp. 
llO-lirt. 
