Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/368

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338
WALLERTON
WALLIS

Biration of his term he was appointed, in 1885, U. S. consul-general at London, England.


WALLERTON, Charles Louis Auguste, French naturalist, b. in Sainte-Menehould in 1721 ; d. in Nancy in 1788. He was sent to Mexico in 1759 to study the botany of that country, at the suggestion of the Academy of sciences of Paris, and obtained a special privilege to enter the Span- ish dominions. Landing in V era Cruz in October, 1760, he explored the province of Michoacan, where he formed a rich herbarium of medicinal plants, and afterward he searched the public libra- ries and the convents for information about the remedies that were formerly used by the Aztecs. He then visited the Isthmus of Panama, Santo Do- mingo, and Cuba, and made a thorough explora- tion of the latter island. On his return to France in 1765, with an herbarium of 1,500 medicinal plants, he was elected corresponding member of the Academy of sciences, and secretary of the Academy of Nancy, where he settled. He wrote " Traite explicatif d'un herbier de plantes medici- nales recueillies dans un voyage a la Nouvelle Es- pagne, dans l'isthme de Darien et a l'ile de Cuba " (3 vols., Nancy, 1767-70); " Monographic des mala- dies syphilitiques et des simples en usage chez les anciehs Indiens du Mexique" (1770); and "Ta- bleau de la flore du royaume de la Nouvelle Es- pagne, et en particulier de la province de Mechoa- can " (2 vols., 1775-'9).


WALLEY, John, soldier, b. probably in Lon- don, England, in 1644; d. in Boston, Mass., 11 Jan., 1712. He was a son of the Rev. Thomas Wal- ley. On 12 Feb., 1689, he commanded the first ex- pedition against the French and Indians in Canada, and in August, 1690, he sailed from Boston as the lieutenant of Sir William Phips in a second ex- pedition. He landed near Quebec with about 1,200 men, and after some courageous but ineffect- ual fighting, and an unsuccessful bombardment by Phips's fleet, he re-embarked. Walley was one of the principal founders of the town and church of Bristol, became a member of the council in 1687, and was captain of the Ancient and honorable artillery of Boston. His journal of the Canadian expedition is printed in Thomas Hutchinson's "History of Massachusetts."


WALLING, Henry Francis, cartographer, b. in Burrillville, R. I., 11 June, 1825; d. in Cam- bridge, Mass., 8 April, 1888. He was educated at public schools and was fitted for college, but be- came assistant librarian in the Providence athe- naeum. While so engaged he studied mathematics and surveying, and entered the office of Barrett Cushing, a civil engineer in Providence, whose partner he became in 1846. He began topographic work in 1849, and prepared atlases containing full maps and scientific descriptions of most of the northern states and the Dominion of Canada. In 1867 he was called to the chair of civil engineering in Lafayette, which he filled for three years, and then resigned to accept an appointment as assist- ant on the U. S. coast survey. Subsequently he became connected with the U. S. geological survey, and in 1884 was assigned to duty in connection with the geodetic survey of Massachusetts, on the preparation of the state maps, on which work he was engaged at the time of his death. He was a fellow of the American association for the advance- ment of science, and of the American society of civil engineers, to whose proceedings he contributed papers of value. It was said that " to him more than to any one else is due the better appreci- ation of good maps, which is now bearing fruit in the work of the national survey."


WALLIS, Gustav, German botanist, b. in Lune- burg, Prussia, 1 May, 1830 ; d. in Cuenca, Ecuador, 20 July, 1878. Little is known of his early life. In 1860 he began his search for botanical rarities in tropical America for a horticultural house in Brussels. His explorations were confined chiefly to Amazon river and its tributaries, the mountain- ous coast-line, and the Isthmus of Panama. He also visited the Philippine islands for a London house, and before his death began to explore the Pacific coast of Ecuador at his own expense. He enriched horticulture with 1,000 new species.


WALLIS, Samuel, English navigator, b. about 1720; d. in London in 1795. He entered the navy, commanded a division of cutters in Canada in 1760, and after the conclusion of peace was charged with the completion of the discoveries of Capt. John Byron in the Pacific. Sailing from Plym- outh, 22 Aug., 1766, he anchored in the following November near Cape Virgins on the coast of Pata- gonia, where he had intercourse with the natives, and discovered that they were not giants, as had been asserted by former navigators. On 17 Sept. he entered the Strait of Magellan, which he ex- plored for four months. Leaving the strait on 11 April, Wallis discovered Pentecost island on 3 June, 1767, and later Queen Charlotte island. He returned to Dover, 19 May, 1768, and in 1780 was appointed commissioner of the admiralty, which post he retained till his death. Wallis's narrative was published in John Hawkesworth's collection, entitled " An Account of the Voyages undertaken for making Discoveries in the South- ern Hemisphere" (3 vols., London, 1773).


WALLIS, Severn Teackle, lawyer, b. in Balti- more, Md., 8 Sept., 1816. He was graduated at St. Mary's college, Baltimore, in 1832, studied law with William Wirt and John Glenn, and in 1837 was admitted to the bar. Mr. Wallis early developed a taste for literature and con- tributed to periodi- cals many articles of literary and histori- cal criticism, also oc- casional verses. He became a proficient in Spanish literature and history and was elected a correspond- ing member of the Royal academy of history of Madrid in 1843. In 1846 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal society of northern antiquaries

of Copenhagen. In

1847 he visited Spain and in 1849 the U. S. government sent him on a special mission to that country to examine the title to the public lands in east Florida, as affected bv roval grants during the negotiations for the treaty of 1819. From 1859 till 1861 he contributed largely to the editorial columns of the Baltimore "Exchange," and he has also written for other journals. He was a Whig till the organization of the American or Know-Nothing party, after which he was a Democrat. In 1861 he was sent to the house of delegates of Maryland, and took an active part in the proceedings of the legislature of that year at Frederick. He was chairman of the committee on Federal relations, and made himself obnoxious to the Federal authorities by his reports, which were adopted by the