Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/857

Rh plants, we have a total of nearly fourteen hundred new species added to botanic science by the talents and industry of a single observer. The whole number of species known at his death was estimated at sixty thousand.

Until he was about fifty years of age his health had been excellent. But the various and increasing cares of his official position finally had their effect. The sedentary work involved in writing a dissertation on the affairs of his community, which prevented for a time his usual out-of-door exercise, was the immediate cause of a severe cough and other alarming symptoms of decline. His spirits, which had been uniformly cheerful, became depressed. A journey to the West to establish a branch community of the United Brethren in Indiana was temporarily beneficial, but his system was undermined and the progress of disease could not be stayed. On February 8, 1834, came the end of what his memoirist calls "a life of various, constant, and unobtrusive usefulness."

A widow and four sons survived him. All the sons entered the Moravian ministry. The eldest, Emil Adolphus de Schweinitz, was born in Salem, N. C., in 1816. He filled various ecclesiastical offices in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, was made a bishop in 1874, and died in 1879. The second son, Robert, was born in Salem, in 1819. He has filled various charges and was for many years President of the Executive Board of the American Moravian Church. Since his retirement from the active ministry he has been general treasurer of the Church and of its Foreign Mission Department. The third son, Edmund Alexander, was born in Bethlehem in 1825, and died there in 1887. He also became a bishop, and was the author of several books on the history and polity of the Unitas Fratrum. In 1856 he established a weekly journal for the Moravians in America, which he edited for ten years. Bernard, the youngest son, was born at Bethlehem, in 1828, and died at the age of twenty-six years, being at the time in charge of a church on Staten Island. During the latter years of the father's life he used de in place of von in his name, and the sons have always used the new form.

Von Schweinitz was of high stature, erect carriage, and robust habit. The portrait accompanying this sketch is a copy of a miniature painted some years before his death, and consequently represents him in the prime of life. He had an unusually amiable and attractive disposition, which made him a general favorite with high and low. His conversational powers were of a high order, and contributed much to an ease of intercourse which was an important factor of his usefulness. Humor, anecdote, and repartee were always at his command, while the varied and exciting scenes through which he had passed and the prominent