The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1869-02-20
Thr InIr unrnrc NInun.

The following tribute to the memory Of Mr.. Horace
Mann was taken from the Proceedings Of the Boston
Society of Natural History, November Is. 1868:
Horace MANN, CURATOR OF BoTANY IN THE BoS
TOY SOCIETY," or NATURAL HI>ToRY.-After the read
ing of the Records, the President announced the re-
cent death, after an illness of short duration, of Mr.
Horace Mann, Curator of Botany. The feeling of the
Society was expresSei by Mr.. William T.. Brigham,
who spoke as follows
1t i sad 10 speak publicly of our private SORROWS,
but when those sorrows touch all alike who reverence
the good, admire the brave, rejoice over victories in
the noble struggle of light against darkness, knowl-
edge against ignorance, or who mourn over great eff
forts uncomPletei, then must we lay aside all thoughts
Of personal loss, and speak each with all of our COM
mon grief.
The youngest officer of this Society has left us never
to return. Were years alone the test of usefulness
ana manhood, We might count over the few that
Horace Mann numbered in his earthly life, regret
they were so few, and from the full-grown and ripened
lives still with us, look for his successor. But Vainly
should we look where should We find in all the years
the best of our number could show, a single year so
full of hard work, conscientious, unselish, ~self-sacri-
tcing struggle that the world might know more, and
the cause Of science be advanced?
In his earliest youth Horace Mann drew in from his
fathers careful teachings the love of Nature, which
has since been his constant joy. Often would he
softly open the door of his fathers study, and come
silently TO his fathers side, waiting for the leisure
which would give him some of the marvellous stories
about the earth and its inhabitants, which in his mind
took the place of the unrealities of fairyland so dear
to most children.
Chemistry was the delight of his boyhood, and his
fathers house contained a laboratory, in which he
spent many an hour, often to the great anxiety of his
family, who dreaded the usual results of boyish ex-
periments with powerful Reagents. Inanimate mat
ter did not satisfy him, and after much thought.
although opposed by most of his friends, who wished
him 10 receive n collegiate education, he determined
to devote himself TO the study of Nature, entering
Professor Agassiz' school as a student of zoology and
geology. This was at the time when the present
Museum was recently built, and the hard manual
labor of moving and arranging heavy specimens.
which he so readily undertook, seriously affected his
health. He was ut this time also deeply interested in
conchology, and most especially in botany, and 1t was
from this latter interest that the companiOnship and
friendship commenced, which for the last four or five
years have SO closely united us. When DIR. Asa Gray
was told that L was soon to visit the Hawaiian ISL
ands, he asked me to collect the very peculiar flora of
that group, and suggested the p~ropriety of asking
Horace Mann to accompany me. 1t was q short no
tice. but his friends advised him to go, and he Joined
me in California. From that time, for more than a
year We were constant companions, and many a long
ride, many a weary walk, did we share. For more
than six months we kept house together in Honolulu,
and from the first day to the last he was the same
modest, retiring, Woodworking, unselfsh, conscien-
tiOus man. Thoroughly alive to all the beauties and
wonders of Nature there surrounding him, he often
wrote home that he enjoyed every moment, and often
indeed have L seen him in perfect ecstasy over the
discovery of some new plant after a hard climb up
some island precipice.
With his rich collections he returned to Cambridge,
and was soon appointed DIR. Gray's assistant, and
afterwards Instructor in Botany in Harvard College.
Besides the work of arranging the Thayer Herbarium
and constantly aiding DIR. Gray in preparing material
for his classes, and revising proofs of his two botan-
lcal manuals,"a work more than enough for a COM
mon man, a work indeed that no common man could
worked steadily in his spare hours, often late
into the night, ON his Hawaiian collections. The
many thousand specimens were determined and Ia
beled and partly distributed his I" Enumeration of
Hawaiian Plants which has given hima good botan-
ical reputation, was published by the American Acad-
envy of Arts and Sciences (of which he was unan-
imously elected a fellow on the very evening of his
decease) n most complete Flora of the islands was
in part by the Essex Institute several
other botanical memoirs were in hand, and you all
know that his labor here in our herbarium and in our
work as a Society, was not light.
His interest in this Society never waned. Often
on shipboard, lying on deck at night, have we talked
over this matter, and he was full of suggestions, many
of which have since been carried out others, such
as a permanent door-keeper for the Museum on ex-
days, guide-books to the various collections,
and a fire-proof floor for the main story of this build
will be perhaps in time. He was always present
at the Council meetings, and his advice was always
sensible and respected.
As a result of our Hawaiian explorations, five new
genera were added to the fora, one of which was ded-
icated to him under the name of Hesperomunnia, and
has been engraved for the next part of our Memoirs,
of new species of towering plants, no less than
seventy-one, or more than eleven per cent. of the en-
tire Heterogeneous Hawaiian flora, were discovered.
His published works, besides a number of reviews in
the american Naturalist, were
On some Hawaiian Crania and Bones. proc. Soc. Nat. Hist,
Vol. Y, p. 229l
On the present condition of Kilauea and Mauna Loa. Ibid.
Vol. y, p. 22S1
Denudation on the Hawaiian Islands. Ibid. Vol. X, p. 1921
Revision of the Genus Schiedea and some of the Rutacep.
Description of the Crater of Haeakala. ibid. Vol. XI, p.
lI2l
Enumeration of Hawaiian Plants. Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts
md Sciences, Vol. VII, p. 1871
Flora of the Hawaiian Islands. proc. Ess. Institute, Vol. VI
The last has not been completed, and a number of
other valuable and interesting memoirs remain unfin-
shed.
j. Early in October the severer symptoms of what he
had considered a mere cold, compelled him most I'M
willingly to give up his college classes. temporarily
rs we all hoped but the worst form of pulmonary
complaint had gone too far to be stopped, and although
his friends all hoped for his recovery, he passed away
on the evening of November 18th, after
some days of great pain and anguish.
Sad as it seems to us, in our blind interpretations
Of Providence, that q life so full of promise. so pure,
so true, a life so short and yet so full of results, should
be cut short, yet the example of this life, called so
loosely to view by the angel of death, cannot but an
mate and encourage many others and the nobly
proportioned column, whose base and lower shaft
alone we see on earth, yet raises lis capital above the
yelling clouds, a monument and beacon we may well
follow.
J.l-o D,o,;,o- 80 ,ba Dolioa Count axoIuJaS I