Curtis : Lucien Marcus Underwood 7 



In addition to the subjects mentioned above, he taught analytical 

 chemistry, mathematics for three years, and during the last year 

 of his service, human physiology. He always had a great liking 

 for this subject and frequently referred to this freshman class as 

 the most interesting, enthusiastic, and enjoyable class of his experi- 

 ence. This appears the more interesting in connection with an 



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extract from a letter in which he states, " I have a class of eighty- 

 seven students in a room that will seat fifty fairly well. Ventila- 

 tion is a difficulty and the period extends from twelve to one, 

 after some of the class have had continuous work since 7:45 A. M. M 

 During his stay at Syracuse he succeeded in introducing 

 laboratory work in biology as a required subject, although this was 

 limited to a two-hour course in the spring term of the second 

 year — such was the opposition to innovations of this nature. 

 Owing to limited facilities for work, it was necessary to divide this 

 class into sections, which often necessitated the repetition of the 

 work on four successive afternoons. This period marks the turn- 

 ing point in his career. Gradually he abandoned the study of 

 zoology and discontinued the accumulation of works upon the 

 Arthropoda, on which group, at that time, he had an extensive 

 working library. Henceforth he gave his attention to cryptogamic 

 botany, continuing his work on the hepatics and becoming inter- 

 ested in the mosses and especially in the fungi. 



His herbaria of the lower plants increased rapidly, owing to his 

 extensive collecting and especially through exchanges which were 

 made possible by reason of his numerous visits to centers of botan- 

 ical interest. Thus in 1884 he visited Asa Gray at Cambridge, 

 and he often enthusiastically referred to the assistance received and 

 e friendships formed at the various meetings of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, notably at the Phila- 

 delphia meeting in 1884, where he first met many botanists that 

 he had known by correspondence ; and at the Ann Arbor meeting 

 in 1885, where he roomed in a private house with Arthur, Barnes, 

 and Coulter, while they were making the final review of their 

 " Handbook of Plant Dissection." He spent the summer of 1887 

 in Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, in the service of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, and during the following summer he was 

 occupied in collecting, largely in southern California. 



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