HIGHLIGHTS OF BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN THE NEW WORLD 217 



Fernald. Comment has already been made about his numerous expeditions 

 to the maritime provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Field 

 activity took him not only to the Atlantic seaboard region of the Gray's 

 Manual range, but also as far south as Virginia, where from 1933 to 1945 

 he made some thirty-three field trips. By 1940, at the conclusion of thirty 

 trips, he had been able to "collect 650 [species] of flowering plants not 

 recorded as definitely growing in the state." Companions on his southern 

 journeys were Ludlow Griscom and Bayard Long, both of whom had been 

 with him in the north. 



Fernald, with B. L. Robinson, had compiled and issued in 1908 the seventh 

 edition of Gray's New Manual oj Botany, which has been one of the standard 

 texts for nearly fifty years. In 1950, at the end of his long and full career, 

 he completed the eighth edition of Gray's Manual oj Botany. This great 

 work was wholly his own and stands as a monument to his own field industry 

 and individual critical herbarium study. 



From 1896 to 1952 the Illustrated Flora oj the Northern United States, 

 Canada, and the British Possessions by N. L. Britton and Addison Brown 

 shared prominence and influence with Gray's Manual. This work, which has 

 set a standard for later illustrated floras, was completed by Britton while he 

 was still professor of botany at Columbia University. Britton had been active 

 in the field as a student of the flora of the northeastern states, but after he 

 founded and became director of The New York Botanical Garden, he became 

 most widely known as a field man by his numerous expeditions to the West 

 Indies. 



The New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora oj the Northeastern United 

 States and Adjacent Canada (1952) is entirely a completely rewritten and 

 re-illustrated work. It bears wholly the point of view and interpretation of 

 H. A. Gleason (except for portions contributed by collaborators), who him- 

 self was first a field man and student of ecology in the middle west. This 

 work of Gleason's is a well-balanced book, reflecting clearly the influence of 

 his insight into modern phytogeographic, geologic, and genetic concepts. It 

 will remain the standard work on the northeast flora for many years. 



John Kunkel Small, who for nearly forty years was attached to the staff 

 of The New York Botanical Garden, was a dominant figure in the study of the 

 southeastern flora. In a succession of more than a hundred field trips through- 

 out the southeast from Virginia to Florida (more than thirty-five to Florida 

 alone) and Texas, he accumulated the mass of material which was to provide 

 the basis for his Flora oj the Southeastern United States (1903) and the 

 second edition (1913), and the Manual oj the Southeastern Flora (1933). 

 Edward J. Alexander, long an associate of Dr. Small's, was primarily instru- 

 mental in the final assembling of the Manual, which was published shortly 

 after Small's death. 



Roland M. Harper, who today has the greatest store of field experience of 



