396 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



amous botany is a short article upon three new plants which 

 he had discovered in that district, contributed to the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science and Arts in the year 1842. The 

 observations which he continued to make were communi- 

 cated to his correspondents and friends, the authors of the 

 Flora of North America, then in progress. 



"As soon as the flowering plants of his district had ceased 

 to afford him novelty, he turned to the mosses, in which he 

 found abundant scientific occupation, of a kind well suited to 

 his bent for patient and close observation, scrupulous accu- 

 racy, and nice discrimination. His first publication in his 

 chosen department, the Musci Alleghanienses, was accompanied 

 by the specimens themselves of mosses and hepaticae collected 

 in a botanical expedition through the Alleghany Mountains 

 from Maryland to Georgia, in the summer of 1843, the writer of 

 this notice being his companion. The specimens were not only 

 critically determined, but exquisitely prepared and mounted, 

 and with letterpress of great perfection ; the whole forming 

 two quarto volumes, which well deserve the encomium be- 

 stowed by Pritzel in his Thesaurus. It was not put on sale, 

 but fifty copies were distributed with a free hand among bryol- 

 ogists and others who would appreciate it. 



" In 1846 Mr. Sullivant communicated to the American Acad- 

 emy the first part, and in 1849 the second part, of his Con- 

 tributions to the Bryology and Hepaticology of North Amer- 

 ica, which appeared one in the third, the other in the fourth 

 volume (new series) of the academy's Memoirs, each with 

 five plates from the author's own admirable drawings. These 

 plates were engraved at his own expense, and were generously 

 given to the academy. 



"When the second edition of Gray's Manual of the Botany 

 of the Northern United States was in preparation, Mr. Sulli- 

 vant was asked to contribute to it a compendious account of 

 the musci and hepatica of the region, which he did, in the space 

 of about one hundred pages, generously adding, at his sole 

 charge, eight copperplates crowded with illustrations of the 

 details of the genera ; thus enhancing vastly the value of his 

 friend's work, and laying a foundation for the general study 

 of bryology in the United States, which then and thus began. 

 So excellent are these illustrations, both in plan and execution, 

 that Schimper, then the leading bryologist of the Old World, 



