Speaking of Botta, he was young doctor/naturalist on French voyage along
the Pacific coast in 1820s...he found a number of new species inlcuding his
pocket gopher and Anna's Hummingbird...Botta went on to great fame as
diplomat/archaeologist, discovering the ruins of Nineveh in what is now
Iraq...cabinet scientists back in Europe published the first scientific
descriptions of the species he collected on that 1820s voyage...his natural
history notes on the voyage were never published