Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/735

Rh Florence, after his death, by a legal process, assumed the name of Frank Leslie, and has since conducted the business of the publishing-house. She is the author of &ldquo;From Gotham to the Golden Gate&rdquo; (New York, 1877).

LESLIE, James, Canadian senator, b. in Kair, Kincardineshire, Scotland, in 1786 ; d. in Montreal, Canada, in 1873. His father, Capt. James Leslie, was assistant quartermaster in Wolfe's army at the taking of Quebec. The son was educated at Aberdeen, Scotland, and was for many years a mer- chant in Montreal. He served with the Montreal volunteers during the war of 1812, and remained attached to the service till 1862, when he retired with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Mr. Leslie represented Montreal in the Lower Canada assem- bly from 1824 until the union of the provinces, and Vercheres from 1844 till 1848, when he was called to the legislative council, of which he was president from March till September, 1848. He was provincial secretary from that date until 1851, and from 1867 till his death sat in the senate.

LESLIE, Preston Hopkins, lawyer, b. in Clin- ton county, Ky., 8 March, 1819. He received a limited education in country schools, and worked as a common laborer for several years until he ob- tained a clerkship in a store and finally in the county office. He then studied law under Samuel B. Maxey, and began practice in 1842. About 1854 he removed to Glasgow, where he has since resided. He was elected to the representative as- sembly in 1844 and in 1850, and to the state senate in 1867, of which body he was elected speaker in 1869 and acting lieutenant-governor. On the elec- tion of Gov. John W. Stevenson to the U. S. senate in the next year, he succeeded as governor, and in 1871, as the nominee of the Democratic party, he was elected to the office for the term of four years. After his retirement he was elected and served six years as judge of the Glasgow circuit district.

LESQUEREUX, Leo, paleontologist, b. in Fleurier, Switzerland, 18 Nov., 1806. He was des- tined for the church by his mother, but, on enter- ing the academy of Neuchatel, met Arnold Guyot, and together they became devoted to natural sci- ence. After completing his course at the academy in 1827, he went to Eisenach for the purpose of per- fecting himself in the German language prepara- tory to entering the University of Berlin, and sup- ported himself by teaching French. From 1829 till 1834 he was principal of the college at Chaux de Fonds, but, becoming deaf, he was obliged to give up this place. He then worked at engrav- ing, and also made watch-springs until 1848. Meanwhile he had begun the study of mosses and of fossil botany, becoming interested also in the subject of peat, its production, and possible repro- duction. His knowledge of this subject led to his engagement by the government of Neuchatel to examine the peat-bogs of that canton, and later, under the patronage of the king of Prussia, he explored the peat-bogs of northern Europe. His researches gained for him in 1844 a gold medal. which was awarded by the government of Neu- chatel for the best popular treatise on the forma- tion of peat. In 1848 he came to the United States, and at first made his home in Cambridge, where he assisted Louis Agassiz for a time, but soon removed to Columbus, Ohio, where he has since lived. There he became first associated with William S. Sullivant in the study of Ameri- can bryologv. Together they published " Musci Americani Exsiccati" (1856;" 2d ed.. 1865). and subsequently he assisted Mr. Sullivant in the ex- amination of the mosses that had been collected by Capt. Charles Wilkes on the South Pacific ex- ploring expedition and by Lieut. Amiel W. Whip- ple on the Pacific railroad exploration, and finally in his "Icones Muscorum (Cambridge, 1864). His own most valuable researches, beginning in 1850, were studies of the coal-formations of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and Arkansas, on which he contributed memoirs to the reports of the state surveys. His investigations on the coal flora of Pennsylvania are of special value. He prepared a " Catalogue of the Fossil Plants which have been named or described from the Coal-Measures of North America" for the reports of Henry D. Rogers in 1858, and in 1884 furnished " The Coal Flora ' ? (3 vols, of text, with an atlas) for the second geological survey of Pennsylvania, which is regarded as the most important work on carboniferous plants that has thus far appeared in the United States. Since 1868 parts of the mate- rial in fossil botany have been referred to him by the various national surveys in the field, and he has contributed to their reports the results of his investigations. He is a member of more than twenty scientific societies in the United States and Europe, and in 1864 was the first member that was elected to the National academy of sciences. The titles of his publications are more than fifty in number, and include twelve important volumes on the natural history of the United States, besides which he has published " Letters written on Ger- many " (Neuchatel. 1846) and " Letters written on America" (1847-'55). He has also published, with Thomas P. James, " Manual of the Mosses of North America" (Boston, 1884).

LESSEPS, Ferdinand Marie, Viscount de, French diplomat, b. in Versailles, 11 Nov., 1805. He received his early education in Paris, but finished it with his father, a consular agent, and lived with him in Philadelphia in 1819-'22, where he acquired, as he said, at a dinner given to him in that city in 1880, the qualities of pluck and tenacity. He was consular agent at Lisbon in 1825-'7. when he received an appointment in the division of commerce. In 1828 he was attached to the consulate at Tunis, and three years later became vice-consul at Alexandria and consul at Cairo, where he remained till 1838. when he was sent to Rotterdam, afterward to Malaga and to Barcelona. After the downfall of Louis Philippe he was appointed minister to Spain and afterward to Rome. After 1850 he devoted his energy to the opening of the Suez canal, the idea of which he had conceived during his sojourn in Egypt. While on a visit in Egypt in 1854 he disclosed the project to Said Pacha, who invited him to draw up a memorial on the subject, which was done, with full details. Said Pacha issued a firman sanctioning the enterprise in 1854, granted a letter of concession in January, 1856. and took a large number of shares, and after many difficulties Lesseps formed a company in Paris in 1858. Work on the canal was begun in the spring of 1859. A canal for steamboats of light draught was opened on 15 Aug., 1865. Its bed was enlarged so that schooners could pass through in March, 1867. and the completed canal was formally opened amid festivities at Port Said on 17 Nov.," 1869. Lesseps directed his attention to the Sahara desert, proposing to flood a portion of it, and afterward presented a plan for a railway through Asia. Since 1873 he has concentrated his energy on the Panama canal. In 1874 the project was vigorously advocated in the French financial press, and at the meeting of the congress of the geographical sciences, held in Paris in 1875, Lesseps formally proposed to cut a canal across the