EDWARD TUCKERMAN. 543 



botanical model, Fries, for succinctness, and that of his favorite Ger- 

 man philosopiiical masters for involution — was yet all his own, and 

 which was the more pronounced in advancing years, when, owino- to 

 increasing deafness and delicate health, he led a more secluded life. 

 In disquisition, the long and comprehensive sentences which he so 

 carefully constructs are unmistakably clear to those who will patiently 

 plod their way though them, and his choice even of unusual words 

 is generally felicitous; but sometimes the statements are so hedged 

 about and interpenetrated by qualifications or reservations, and so 

 pregnant with subsidiary although relevant considerations, that they 

 are far from easy reading. Like nests of pill-boxes, they are packed 

 into least bulk ; but for practical use they need to be taken apart. 



That Professor Tuckerman could write idiomatic and clear-flowing 

 English upon occasion, the delightful introduction to his edition of 

 Josselyn's " New England's Rarities " demonstrates ; and in the fram- 

 ing of botanical descriptive phrases, Latin or English, in which clear- 

 ness and brevity v.ith just order and proportion are desiderata, he had 

 hardly a superior. 



As has been said, his botanical model was Elias Fries. He had 

 visited him at Upsal,and he kept up a correspondence with him to the 

 end of the venerable botanist's life. He caught from Fries, or he 

 developed independently, and cultivated to perfection, that sense of 

 the value of the indefinable something which botanists inadequately 

 express by the term " habit," which often enables the systematist to 

 divine much further than he can perceive in the tracing of relationships. 

 Upon this, in direct reference to Fries, and with a use of the term 

 that seems to correlate it with " insight," Tuckerman remarks : " So 

 great is the value of Habit in minds fully qualified to apprehend and 

 appreciate its subtleties, that such minds may not only anticipate what 

 the microscope is to reveal, but help us to understand its revelations." 

 It should be remembered, however, that when Fries did the best of 

 his work there were no microscopes of much account ; and it is 

 probable that Tuckerman would have done more, and perhaps have 

 reached some different conclusions, if he had earlier and more largely 

 used the best instrumental appliances of the time. One advantage, how- 

 ever, of his way of study, and his philosophical conception of an ideal 

 connection of forms which are capable of a wide play of variation, 

 was that he took broad views of genera and species. So he was quite 

 unlike that numerous race of specialists who, in place of characterizing 

 species, describe specimens, and to whom "genus" means the lowest 

 recognizable group of species. 



