Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Huss, Magnus

HUSS, Magnus, Swedish naturalist, b. in Upsala in 1752; d. in Stockholm in 1799. He was secretary in 1781 of one of the ministers that were sent by Spain to determine the boundaries between the Portuguese and the Spanish possessions in South America, according to the treaty of San Ildefonso,and during his sojourn of fifteen years in the country he made a chart of the province of Asuncion, which was considered until recently as a valuable one. He studied also the natural history of South America, and published among other works “Reisa y Amerika och det indre Paraguay” (Stockholm, 1796; translated into French as “Voyage au Paraguay,” 2 vols., Paris, 1798; and into English as “A Relation of a Journey through South America in the Paraguay Province,” London, 1800); “Essai sur l'histoire naturelle des quadrupédes des provinces du Paraguay et de l'Uruguay” (5 vols., Stockholm, 1797); “Traité sur les reptiles de l'Amérique du Sud,” which is yet considered as an authority (2 vols., Stockholm, 1799); “Amerikanisk nationens Seder, Bruk, och Klædedrægter,” a dissertation on the customs of South America; and “Délimitation des frontières des possessions Espagnoles et Portugaises dans l'Amérique duSud, selon le traité de San Ildefonso” (2 vols., with charts, Stockholm, 1799).