A PRELIMINARY LIST OF PACIFIC COAST HEPATIC. 
LUCIEN MARCUS UNDERWOOD. 
The Hepatice or liverworts represent a group of plant life in 
which a peculiar interest centers. Though they lack the economic 
importance possessed by the fungi, though they do not appeal ina 
popular way to our esthetic nature like the marine alge and the 
ferns, they nevertheless possess a three-fold interest to the general 
student of botany. In the first place they stand on the dividing 
line between thallose and cauline plants; from the standpoint of 
anatomy they afford illustration of the earliest and simplest differ- 
entiation of tissues since they present every gradation from a simple 
thallus to a well-developed leafy axis; many structural problems 
find illustration and settlement here. In the second place they il- 
lustrate in a marked degree variability of form resulting from habitat, 
climate and physical environment; to the systematist this group 
presents special fascination, the more so when we attempt the prob- 
lem of generic limits, always puzzling but here pre-eminently so, 
notwithstanding the critical work recently done by Spruce. and 
Lindberg. And lastly in the matter of distribution, both in time 
and space, the hepatics present many interesting and anomalus ques- 
tions which increase in complexity as we attempt to unravel their 
genetic relations to other groups of — life with which they show 
an evident connection. 
The attention given to the Hepatice in America has been com- 
paratively slight, and in no region is this more apparent than on 
~ some portions of the Pacific Coast.!_ Many of our botanical teachers 
seem to fail in their appreciation of the extent and importance of 
the group, and a number of the botanical text-books in common 
_ use which attempt to treat the subject in some way manage to con- 
1 Jt is a surprising fact that the Hepatice of many less settled portions of Amer- 
ica are better known than those of California. The labors of Wright and others 
_ in the West Indies, of Liebmann and Miiller in Mexico, of Lindig in Columbia, 
and lastly of Spruce in Brazil and the Andes, have not only added greatly to our 
knowledge of the group, but have furnished some of the most elaborate systematic 
- works yet published. Gottsche’s ‘‘De Mexicanske Levermosser,” containing the — 
_ results of Liebmann’s Explorations is a most elaborate monograph, and its plates 
executed by Dr. Gottsche himself are matchless. On the other hand, Spruce’s 
“‘Hepatica of the Amazon and the Andes,” contains some of the most accurate 
_ and complete descriptions of liverworts in any literature, as well as the most mature 
i and valosbie. conclusions on classification that have ever been made. 
