BULLETIN 
.- TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 
The Biological Status of Lichens. 
By ALBERT SCHNEIDER. 
For reasons to be enumerated, our present knowledge of 
lichens is very imperfect. Lack of attention is not the cause, as 
the voluminous literature on the subject will testify. The refer- 
ences, authentic and otherwise, number many thousands. It 
would be an endless task to bring together all the monographs, 
treatises, and especially the “ fragments,’ referring to lichens. 
Lichenologists of ante-Schwendenerian time supposed that the 
- question of the true nature of lichens and their position in the 
vegetable kingdom was permanently settled. Nothing was left 
for them to do but to issue “fragments” describing presumably 
new species and varieties. Collectors set to work in widely dis- 
tributed and circumscribed areas to add their mite to the heap of 
confusion. We all know that the ultimate aim of science is to 
systematize; but no system can be formed from unknown mate- 
rial, whatever it may be. A scientist's first duty then is to study 
(as far as possible) his material before attempting to classify it. 
_ This careful studying of material is what the mass of lichenolo- 
gists have heretofore failed to do. It is not my intention to enter 
into a historical review of lichenology, as that has already been 
thoroughly done by Krempelhuber and others. With the above 
introduction I shall now attempt to make somewhat clearer the 
_ Present status of general lichenology. 
