18 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



North American Hepatic*.- Among all the groups of 



Cryptogamia the Hepaticce seem to receive the least attention 

 from students and are also neglected by general botanical collectors. 

 The group was not recognized by Linna?us as a distinct order yet in 

 Class XXIV in his Systema Natara he describes forty-five species dis- 

 tributed among the following genera : — -Jungermannia, twenty-eight ; 

 Targionia, one; Marchantia, seven; Blasia, one; Riccia, five; An- 

 thoceros, three. Although these Linnsean species to some extent have 

 been redistributed among other genera by later botanists, the genera 

 still remain and include some of our common forms of Hepaticce. 



Since the time of Linnaeus other genera have been formed by Du- 

 mortier, Palisot de Beauvois, Raddi, Micheli, Corda, Nees, Linden- 

 berg, Taylor and Lehmann. 



The British Jungennannice were describe 1 by Sir W.J.Hooker 

 in 1816, and those of Germany by T. P. Eckart in 1832. 



Corda published the Genera Hepticarumixoxa Prague in 1828, and 

 Nees von Esenbeck in connection with Gottsche and Lindenberg 

 published the Synopsis Hepaticarum from Hamburg from 1844 to 1847 '■> 

 the latter is as yet the only general work on Hepaticce that has been 

 issued 



In our own country there have been only two investigators of promi- 

 nence. W. S. Sullivant (1803-1873) published the "Musci and He- 

 paticae of the Eastern United States," which formed an appendix to 

 one of the earlier issues of Gray's Manual ; the copyright bears 

 date of 1856 and this work which is the only one attempting to clas- 

 sify our native species is now outof print and can scarcely be obtained 

 at any price. 



In the death of Coe F. Austin, of Closter, N. J., in 1880, Amer- 

 ica lost not only an enthusiastic botanist but her solitary worker 

 among the Liverworts. His contributions to the subject were unfor- 

 tunately not arranged in any systematic publication, but are found 

 scattered through various scientific journals, notably the Proceedings 

 of the Philadelphia Academy, Botanical Gazette, and the Bulletin 

 of the Torrey Botanical Club. In addition to many notes on species 

 already described, Mr. Austin has described over sixty new Ameri- 

 can Hepaticce besides many from foreign localities chiefly Japan and 

 the Sandwich Islands. His ''Hepaticce Borcali-A?ncricance exsiccatce" 

 containing over one hundred and seventy numbers was first distributed 

 in 1874. 



Only a small portion of America has been searched thoroughly 

 for Liverworts. Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and portions of New 

 England, California, and Illinois have been more or less carefully ex- 

 amined but the greater portion of the continent is still new territory. 

 Seventy-six species have been catalogued from New Jersey and forty- 

 five from Illinois, yet in the latter State only a few counties have 

 been carefully examined. The descriptions of the American species 

 being so widely scattered through German and English works and in- 

 accessible works and periodicals published in our own country, and 

 especially being written largely in Latin are not in a form to be of especial 



