SHOT BY MEXICAN REBELS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 294, 6 May 1911, Page 8

SHOT BY MEXICAN REBELS

A NEW ZEALAND VISITOR. Christchurch, May 3. A cable message published in the newspapers to-day reporting that rebels in Mexico shot and killed Dr. Olsson Sefl'er, formerly professor at the University of California, and that international complications may result, re feis to a man with an interesting career and personality, who has some connection with this Dominion. Dr. Pehr Olsson Sefl'er was born at Ekenas, Finland, in 1873, and was educated at the University of Helsingfors. After occupying different positions in his native country and doing a good deal of scientific work he went to Australia in 1901. There he spent six months on scientific investigations in the interior of the continent. Later on he was chemist to the Maryborough sugar factory, and was manager of a sugar plantation. In the following year he visited New Guinea, New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands, and spent a few weeks in New Zealand studving the sandhills near the North Cape." In 1903 he was at the Leland Stanford University, California, where he became an instructor in the botanical department. At that time Dr. Scffer w T as a correspondent of Dr. L. Cockayne, of Christchurch, who furnished him with many photographs of New Zealand vegetation for the purpose of illustrating a work on general plant geography which he contemplated producing. In 1905 the boom in rubber planting in Mexico attracted Dr. SefTer to that republic, although he had just received an appointment in the Philippines from the United States Government. For •ome years he was a director of a botanical station connected with the study of rubber-producing trees, and later on behalf of the Mexican Government lie visited most of the tropical parts of the world and also Europe to study tropical agriculture and products. Recently lie established a scientific publicatio* entitled "The American Journal of Tropical Agriculture," and a special experiment station for the investigation of the rubber problems confronting the planters of Mexico and Central America. His publications number no fewer than 108, and are written in at least seven European languages. Dr. Cockayne states that he was an interesting correspondent, and that an adventurous death was what might have been expected| from the tone of his letters. Probably he was a naturalised American citizen, and that fact hag brought about the complications referred to in the cable message.