Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/259

Rh determinations seem to have been, as a rule, correct beyond the ordinary. He was a charter member of the Engelmann Botanical Club, and was its first vice-president. He was also a member of the International Association of Botanists, and was made one of its vice-presidents.

PersonalllyPersonally [sic], he seems to have had no enemies; he always remembered an injury, either real or fancied, and was unstinting in his expression of dislike for those who had in any way incurred his displeasure. His love of botany and his fine herbarium made him well known to the local botanists, yet he never seems to have been on really intimate terms with many of them. He was always ready to exchange specimens of rare plants or local species, and his herbarium was thus greatly enlarged by exchange from other countries as well as from all parts of the United States. During early days he collected specimens for the purpose of selling them, but as he grew older he could rarely be induced to sell his specimens, preferring to exchange.

His herbarium at his death was estimated to contain about 60,000 specimens, and was considered very valuable. It was acquired by the Missouri Botanical Garden, and is at present being incorporated with the herbarium of that institution as rapidly as possible. His herbarium is especially valuable for the reason that it was the basis of a local flora published by Eggert in 1891 under the title "Catalogue of the Phænogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of the Vicinity of St. Louis, Mo." His preface is characteristic and self-explanatory, so that it may well be given:

Since the publication of Mr. Geyer's catalogue of the Plants of Illinois and Missouri, about 1842, no other effort has been made to publish a list of plants growing in the vicinity of St. Louis but my own partial lists of species found in former years. I hope my present catalogue of Plants growing in a radius of about 40 miles around St. Louis will be welcome to botanists until a local flora is published.

Since 1874 I have systematically looked over the ground in all directions, so that very few plants will have escaped my observation; but as I could only go out one day at a time, in places too far off from railroads, there still may be found something new. Railroads also will bring new immigrants from other legions when some of our own plants may have vanished, so that it will be a very important matter for later botanists to know what in former years was growing here. This idea mostly led me to have this catalogue printed.

With the exception of a few plants reported to me by Mr. Letterman, of Allenton, Mo., all plants are collected by myself. The catalogue contains nearly 1,100 different species and varieties, so that St. Louis need not be ashamed of her flora.

This catalogue of Mr. Eggert's is by far the best and most nearly complete list of our plants which has yet appeared. Besides the above mentioned catalogue, a number of small lists of desiderata were