\ Howe: Lucien Marcus Underwood 15 



4 



published in 1899, was written in a somewhat popular vein as an in- 

 troduction to the study of the fungi and has served a useful purpose. 



In considering the more technical aspects of Professor Under- 

 wood's botanical work, one is impressed by his instincts for collect- 

 ing and systematizing, by his ability to express results in a terse, 

 vigorous, synoptical form, and by the importance which he attached 

 to the study of living plants in their natural surroundings as dis- 

 tinguished from the study of their mummified remains in herbaria. 

 In addition to numerous excursions of a more local nature, he 

 made visits to Florida, California, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba, 

 for the purpose of making collections and field-studies of the Hepat- 

 lcae and Pteridophyta. The desirability or even the necessity of 

 such a first-hand acquaintance with the living plants in order to 

 gain any adequate notion of their affinities is sufficiently apparent 

 nowadays as regards any particular group, but is perhaps 

 especially obvious in connection with the tropical tree-ferns, 

 species of which, in some cases, have unfortunately been described 

 from small fragments of the dried leaves. As complementary to 

 the study of living plants in their own homes and to the study of 

 herbarium specimens and the literature pertaining to them, Pro- 

 fessor Underwood insisted upon the importance of seeing, if possi- 

 ble, the original or taxonomic " type "-specimen whenever the first 

 description left any reasonable doubt as to the identity of the plant. 



In his several visits to Europe, he had seen and examined the 

 materials from which most of the endemic American species of 

 ferns were originally described, in so far as such materials are pre- 

 served, and also many foreign types with which American speci- 

 mens had been identified — sometimes erroneously — by the 

 earlier writers. The results of these comparisons have in part 

 been incorporated in his published papers and in part they will 

 become available to his successors through his unpublished notes 

 and sketches. Professor Underwood's enthusiasm for the correct 

 interpretation of all proposed genera and species was naturally cor- 

 related with an interest in other questions connected with the 

 nomenclature of plants. His views in such matters were pro- 

 nounced ; they were forcefully advocated and warmly defended. 

 In the ranks of the reformers and restorers, he was one of the 

 m ost radical and most logical, one of the least compromising and 



