2 1 6 MAGUIRE 



vestigation of the flora of Nova Scotia. Ernst C. Abbe has conducted expe- 

 ditions to the Labrador and Hudson Bay regions, including the Ungava 

 Peninsula and the Richmond Gulf. 



II. TEMPERATE NORTH AMERICA 



In temperate North America, for convenience here the United States, the 

 turn of the century introduced an era of concentrated investigation and 

 evaluation of localized segments of the country's vegetation. 



Watson and Robinson had finally (1895) brought to a close Gray's 

 Synoptical Flora of North America, which superseded the Torrey and Gray 

 Flora of North America (1838-1843). The monumental work of the 

 Synoptical Flora was enriched and, indeed, made possible as a result of the 

 numerous great western and transcontinental expeditions of the mid-century: 

 Fremont, Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1845); Charles 

 Wright, Plantae Wrightianae Texano-Neomexicanae (1852); Botany of the 

 Pacific Railroad Survey (1857-1860), collections made by James A. Snyder, 

 E. G. Beckwith, M. Creutzfeldt, J. W. Gunnison; Charles Wilkes, Expedition 

 to the Pacific Coast of North America (1862-1874); Botany of the Mexi- 

 can Boundary Survey (1859), collections made by C. C. Parry; Clarence 

 King, Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (1871), collections 

 made by Sereno Watson; U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hun- 

 dredth Meridian (1878), collections by J. T. Rothrock; and the Whitney 

 Geological Survey of California (1876-1880), collections made mostly by 

 W. H. Brewer and H. N. Bolander, 



In the west the pioneer Floras, in California, Green's Flora Franciscana 

 (1891), in Oregon, Howell's A Flora of Northwest America (1897-1903), 

 in Colorado, Porter's and Coulter's Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado (1874), 

 and Coulter's New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains 

 (1885) had set the stage for more mature works. The same effect had been 

 accomplished by Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States (1860, 

 1883), and in the east by the successive six editions of Gray's Manual. And, 

 finally, in 1896, Britton and Brown brought out their three-volume Illus- 

 trated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada, and the British Posses- 

 sions, which in form and concept set a new pattern, one which was to have 

 strong influence on North American botany for the succeeding half cen- 

 tury. 



Perhaps no botanist of our time has more influenced the taxonomy of 

 America than the late Merritt Lyndon Fernald. He became assistant in 

 botany at Harvard University in 1891 and continued his labors at the Gray 

 Herbarium for more than half a century. He struck a rare balance between 

 field activity and herbarium study. No one had become more familiar in the 

 field with the plants of the Atlantic states from Maine to Virginia than 



