SECRETARY'S REPORT 23 



York Botanical Garden in May, giving particular attention to the 

 family as represented in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. To 

 facilitate his continuing studies of the Melastomataceae, he borrowed 

 numerous specimens for more detailed investigations. 



Durmg the first part of August, prior to his attendance at the IX 

 International Botanical Congress in Montreal, C. V. Morton, curator 

 of ferns, participated in a field trip to James Bay. This included 

 explorations in the Laurentian forest, the boreal forest of northern 

 Ontario, the Hudson Bay lowlands, and a part of the Great Lakes 

 forest region. A collection of nearly 900 numbers, plus many dupli- 

 cates, was obtained for the U.S. National Herbarium. Following 

 his attendance at tiie Congress, Mr. Morton spent 10 days in the high 

 Sierra Nevada of California collecting specimens for the Museum. 

 Subsequently he visited herbaria in the San Francisco region, exam- 

 ining fern collections and conferring with staff members. Toward 

 the end of the fiscal year Mr. Morton left for Europe to pursue his 

 studies of various groups of ferns in several herbaria, begmning in 

 the herbarium of the Museum National d'llistoire Naturelle in Paris. 



Between March 9 and April 11 Dr. Mason E. Hale, Jr., acting curator 

 of cryptogams, journeyed to southern Mexico to collect lichens for a 

 monographic revision of Parmella. This expedition was sponsored 

 in part by iho, National Science Foundation, and Dr. Hale was 

 accompanied by Thomas R. Soderstrom, a graduate student from 

 Yale University. During a 30- day period of uninterrupted work, 

 the two botanists traveled about 2,500 miles in Veracruz, Chiapas, 

 Oaxaca, and Michoacan, collecting approximately 2,200 nmiibers of 

 cryptogams with many duplicates. This was the first significant 

 exploration for cryptogams in southern Mexico, and many new dis- 

 tribution records, as well as discoveries of new taxa, were made. 

 The specimens, which are now being prepared for study in Washmg- 

 ton, will serve as a basis for specialized studies of cryptogams of the 

 region and particularly as a partial basis for Dr. Hale's revision of 

 the large and widespread genus Parmella. During the first three 

 days of Jmie Dr. Hale visited the herbarium of Duke University to 

 study lichen specimens and consult with colleagues on mutual prob- 

 lems concerning the genus Parmelia^ m connection with his mono- 

 graphic revision. 



In mid- July, Robert R. Ireland, Jr., assistant curator of crypto- 

 gams, collected cryptogams for the National Museum particularly 

 in the Highlands area in the soutliwestern corner of North Carolina, 

 and in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North 

 Carolina-Tennessee border. He obtained more than 800 specimens, 

 mostly bryophytes, which will serve as a partial basis for his study 

 of the moss flora of the southern Appalachians. 



579421*— 61 3 



