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A PRELIMINARY LIST OF THE HEPATICAE OF 



VERMONT. 



By Clifton D. Howe, A. B. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The first record of any extended study of Vermont Hepaticte" is found 

 in a list* published in 1873 by Chas. C. Frost, of Brattleboro. The list con- 

 tains 26 genera and 45 species of hepatics found in Vermont. Since 1873 

 tliis list has remained the only authority on Vermont hepatics, no one else • 

 having made a special study of them. In fact, Mr. Frost studied them onl}' 

 incidentally in connection with his more extended work upon mosses and 

 fleshy fungi. 



Unfortunately, Mr. Frost preserved no specimens of the hepatics upon 

 which liis list was based, or if he did preserve any such collection it 

 has been lost or destroyed. A thorough search of his collection of fungi 

 and other plants, now kept in the Brooks Library at Brattleboro, has failed 

 to discover any specimens of hepatics. Inquiries of men who were asso- 

 ciated with Mr. Frost, as well as investigations of the herbaria of all 

 the New England colleges and of Columbia University and an advertise- 

 ment in a leading botanical journal have all proved almost equally futile. 

 The only representatives of Frost's collections which we have been able 

 to find are ten specimens in the Yale College herbarium, and some of these 

 are of species not included in his list. We are led to the conclusion that 

 Frost did not systematically preserve specimens of hepatics. We are strength- 

 ened in this belief by the fact that it was not his custom to make herba- 

 rium specimens of many of the plants of the other groups in which he was 

 more deeply interested than in tlie Hepaticpe. 



Hepatics grow almost everywhere ; on the ground in moist places, on 

 rocks and stones about streams and on rotten logs and stumps. Some spe- 

 cies are found on the bark of living trees, while others are especially abun- 



* Frost, Chas. C. Catalogue of Cryptogamic Plants of Verinont, Archives of Science and 

 Transactions of the Orleans Co. Society of Natural History. I : ig4. 1873. 



