and at Acapulco, and on May 1, 1791, Malaspina sailed from the latter place for the purpose of exploring the northwest coast. These Spanish voyagers studied the coast line carefully as far, at least, as 60° north latitude, entering the sounds about what is now known as Vancouver Island, locating Mt. Edgecumbe near Sitka, and, finally, disheartened with the failure to discover the desired passage in the closed inlets of Prince Williams Sound, the ships directed their course towards the south, anchoring for a time in Port Mulgrave (or Yakutat Bay), the port Nootka, and tarried several days, to be exact, from September 13 to 25, in the Bay of Monterey, Alta California, where they received from their fellowcountrymen a most cordial welcome.

The botanists of the expedition were Luis Née and Thaddeus Haenke, and it is generally received that these were the first botanical travelers to visit California. In that excellent annotated "List of Persons who have made Botanical Collections in California," by Prof. W. H. Brewer, forming Appendix IV to the Botany of California, we are told that "the first botanists to visit California were Thaddeus Haenke and Luis Née." Dr. Howe, in ERYTHEA, Vol. I, p. 63, repeats to the same effect, and Professor Sargent, in his illuminating work, the Silva of North America, makes the statement1 that "he [Née] and Haenke were the first botanists to visit California." The Bohemian botanist, Thaddeus Haenke, there can be no doubt, came to Monterey with Malaspina in 1791, but it is equally certain, it seems to the writer, that the distinguished Luis Née did not accompany the Spanish captain so far north but remained behind in Mexico. This appears clearly upon the authority of Bancroft, and it is to be offered in addition that, although Née had a decided taste for collecting, no California plants are ever attributed to him save Berberis pinnata, published in 1803 by Lagasca in the "Elenchus Plantarum" of the Royal 1 Vol. viii, 25.

2

2 History of California, vol. i, p. 490, where may be found in a foot-note a full list of the officers made at Monterey. The scientific corps in part was as follows: Jose Espinosa; Felipe Bauza; surgeons Francisco Flores and Pedro Gonzales; apothecary Luis Née* and Tadeo Haenke; pintor de perspectiva Tomás Suria; désecador y dibujante de plantas José de Guio.* The names marked with a star indicate those who remained in Mexico.

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Gardens at Madrid, but this was doubtless merely communicated to that author by Née.

Further evidence may be gathered from Née's own botanical writings. In the Anales de Ciencias Naturales, tomo ii, n. 9, we find descriptions of several new species of American oaks, of which Née is the author, including two from California, viz., the Valley Oak, Quercus lobata, and the Live or Field Oak, Q. agrifolia. This paper was republished in the Annals of Botany3 of Konig and Sims, the Spanish of the article being translated into English, whence the following transcripts of the descriptions of the species just named:

"8. Quercus agrifolia.

"Quercus foliis, lato-ovatis, subcordatis, dentato-spinosis, glabris: fructibus axillaribus, sessilibus.

“An Ilex folia agrifolii americana, forte agria, vel aquifolia glandifera. Plunkenet, tab. 196, fig. 3.

"I can not give the height of this tree, of which I have only seen branches collected at Monterey and Nootka by the marine officer Don Joseph Robredo, and Don Manuel Esquerra, paymaster of the corvette Atrevida. The bark of the branches is ash-colored and smooth. Leaves two inches long, and nearly as wide, are very smooth, veined, rather heart-shaped, with a small number of distant and prickly teeth. Male flowers sessile, on slender racemes two inches long; calyx shorter than the five filaments; anthers large, bilocular. Female flowers sessile, in the axils of the leaves, generally in pairs; cups hemispherical and furnished with loose yellow scales; the acorns three times larger than the cups (about 8 lines long), ovate pointed at the top.

"15. Quercus lobata.

"Quercus foliis lobatis, superne orbiculatis, basi cuneatis, lobis dentatis.

"Of this species I have only seen branches brought from Monterey by Sres. Robredo and Esquerra; they are alternate, sulcated, and smooth. Leaves alternate, rounded at the top, cuneate toward the base, four inches long, and two and a half wide in the middle and towards the tip; margins deeply sinuate, lobes obtuse, toothed; petiole thin, 3-4 lines long."

3ji, 98 (1806).

2

The above descriptions are the first scientific accounts of any Californian trees, and in the above extracts there is ample room for inference had further testimony been needed--that Née did not visit California.

The first botanist, then, to make an herbarium of Californian plants which reached Europe was Thaddeus Haenke. Something concerning his life may, therefore, be adventured on these pages, with the thought that it will not be devoid of interest to students of west American botany, for he appears to have been a man of parts.

He was born at Kreibitz, in Bohemia, on the 5th of October, 1761, and received his early training from an uncle, who was a theologian. Later, he went to the University of Prague, where, in 1782, he was honored with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He next began the study of medicine, but devoted most of his leisure time to botany and botanical rambles. A disposition towards this science he owed to the professor of botany in the university, Joseph Godfred Mikan, in whose home he now was. For several years he traveled extensively in Bohemia, wrote a "Florula of Sudetic," published by the Bohemian Society of Sciences, studied under Jacquin, acquired intimate acquaintance with all the leading scientific men of the day in his country, when, in the 28th year of his age, an event happened which was to change entirely the current of his life. At the "command of the Emperor Joseph II" he willingly undertook service under the King of Spain as one of the corps of naturalists engaged to accompany the Malaspina Expedition. He arrived at Cadiz too late to join the corvettes, followed, however, in the first vessel leaving for the New World, suffered shipwreck on the west coast of South America, escaping only with "his Linnæus," and finally joined Malaspina at Santiago in Chile. His collections from South America, from Nootka, Port Mulgrave, Monterey, San Blas, Acapulco, testify his

His official title reads thus: Fisico-Botanico, Comisionado Por. S. M. Católica.

5 These, as most of his plants, were published by C. B. Presl, in the Reliquiæ Haenkeanae, and consisted chiefly of grasses, rushes and sedges, and of the following exogens characteristic of the Californian summer and autumn hills and low plains: Datisca glomerata, Zauschneria Californica

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scientific ardor. He made a journey from Acapulco to the City of Mexico, accompanied the expedition from Acapulco to the Philippine Islands, where he botanized extensively in the island of Luzon, and eventually returned to South America.

Here was an untouched and indescribably vast field awaiting this investigator of nature, and from Cochabamba, in Peru, which he eventually chose for his home, he made journeys not merely of hundreds but of thousands of miles, following uncharted rivers through wildernesses and traversing lofty mountain chains. Here, moreover, were nations of savage or half-savage peoples, and on account of his reputation for prudence and sagacity, and his extensive ethnological and linguistic knowledge, he was frequently sent by the King on political and judicial missions to scattered villages and distant provinces and as envoy to hostile or warring tribes. To the untutored people of his own vicinage he was at once a protector, a physician, a seer and an expounder of the Divine Word. And yet, notwithstanding manifold duties, he found leisure for the study of physics, chemistry, botany, mathematics, and music, and to found a botanic garden in Cochabamba. In such manner Haenke gratified his love for scientific study, exploration and discovery, and at the same time served the King of Spain; but during all these years the heart of the Bohemian naturalist and voyager ached for his native land. His botanical collections, his notes, his drawings were invariably accumulated with one thought— the idea of return to Europe that he might possess himself once more of scientific advantages in his fatherland denied him in Peru. His letters to his relatives and his friends ever breathe plans for his home-coming, the study of his material and the elaboration of the results of his prolonged investigations in the New World, the publication of which he preserved for himself. All this accomplished, there was the pleasing prospect of philosophic quiet in his own country, surrounded by old acquaintance and familiar scenes.

To

and Frankenia grandifolia. Of exogens, either very few were collected or as seems more likely, they shared the fate of certain South America bundles which were lost. The full title of Presl's work reads thus: Reliquiæ Haenkeanae sue descriptiones et icones plantarum, quas in America meridionali et boreali, in insulus Phillipinis et Marianis collegit Thaddeus Haenke, Philosophiæ Doctor, Phytographus Regis Hispaniæ. Praga, 1830-36. Two folio volumes.

his scientific friends, notwithstanding his long-continued absence, he remained always "our Haenke."

But it was fated that he was never to return to Bohemia. Singularly enough, he "escaped the ferocity of the Indian tribes of the forest, the voracity of the wild beasts, the atrocity of the reptiles, the pernicious puncturings of the insects, and the rains and floods of waters," as Count Sternberg, the author of the biographical sketch in the "Reliquiæ Haenkenae," somewhat luridly puts it, only to meet death in the year 1817 by accidental poisoning within the walls of the house on his own estate, his premature end being brought about by a servant mistaking a toxic fluid for a medicine.

The life of such a man possesses elements of interest for all botanists, regardless of tongue or nationality, and as a member of the Malaspina Expedition to the Pacific Coast of North America, the incidents of his career appeal especially to naturalists residing in California. It pleases us, in good truth, that the first botanist to visit our shores should have been so remarkable a botanical worthy, that he should have been celebrated not only for his scientific enthusiasm, but also for his wisdom and his humanity. Therefore, happy in claiming a small share of direct interest in Haenke's life-work, we join, nearly a century later, in the invocation of his fellow-countrymen on hearing his death: Sit illi terra lævis.