A Biographical Sketch xxi 



genetics of the genus Nicotiana which for many years has been 

 carried on by R. E. Clausen, the writer, and their students. In 

 these illustrations of Setchell's more or less incidental research 

 interests are revealed a scientific curiosity and an enthusiasm 

 which were so balanced by a sense of values that profitable ven- 

 tures have been assured to inheritors of these projects. 



In 1920 came what proved to be a major influence upon his 

 career, in an invitation from the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 

 ington to carry on certain investigations in the Samoan Islands. 

 From this beginning there was derived a sustained interest in 

 a variety of Polynesian problems — the building up of coral reefs, 

 the origin of insular floras, the biological as well as the geological 

 history of the crustaceous corallines, ethnobotany — and from it, 

 too, have come his important contributions concerning the paleo- 

 geography of the Pacific area. In the following ten years he 

 made a series of journeys in this area, and brought back exten- 

 sive collections from Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga, Fiji, Australia, New 

 Zealand, Japan, and South Africa. His undergraduate training 

 in the systematics of vascular plants formed the background for 

 an accumulating knowledge and experience in this field which 

 enabled him to collect with discrimination the significant ele- 

 ments of the Pacific floras with which he came into contact. 

 From these expeditions he acquired first-hand knowledge of 

 the geographic and geologic as well as of the floristic features 

 of the Pacific area in their relation primarily to the fundamental 

 concepts of plant distribution involved. A large place in his 

 thinking today is occupied by these matters, and by his con- 

 tinued investigation of the factors which have brought about 

 the distribution of the marine algae. It is therefore not inappro- 

 priate that this volume which honors his scientific achievements 

 should be concerned with geobotany. 



