ARMISTICE EXTENDED.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 104, 4 May 1911, Page 7

ARMISTICE EXTENDED.

MEXICAN REBELS RETREATING. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.. MEXICO CITY, 3rd May. The armistice has been extended for five days. , The Federal troops have recaptured Ojinaga, and the rebels' are retreating. There has been also continuous fighting, at Sonora. ' The lives of foreigners are not now considered safe in the interior of Mexico. Formal peace negotiations are to begin -at El Paso immediately. SHOOTING OF AN AMERICAN. DR. OLSSON SEFFER. ' fSX XXLZQBAF H— BPSOIAL 10 XH2 IOIX.J 1 CHRISTCHURCH, 3rd May. A cable message published in the newspapers to-day reporting that rebels in Mexico shot and killed Dr. Olsson Seffflr, formerly professor at the University of California, and that international complications may result, refers to a man with an interesting career and personality, who had some connection with this Dominion. Dr. Pehr Olsson Seffer 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 /sri 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 studying 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. Seffer was 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. Seller to that republic, although he had just received an appointment in the Philippines from the United States Government. For some years he was director of a botanir-al station connected with the study of rubber-producing trees, and later on behalf of the Mexican Government he visited most of the tropical parts of the world and also Europe to study tropical agriculture and producte. ' Recently he established a scientific publication entitled "Tho American Journal of Tropical Agriculture," and a special experiment station for the investigation of the rubber problems confronting the planters of Mexica and Central America. , Hte 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 hia letter. Probably he wasanatuiralised American citizen, and that fact has brought about the complications referred [..to in the_cable .message, t