SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 693 



scientific work was the issuing of sets of specimens, mounted on 

 leaves with printed labels, and bound into a volume having a 

 title-page, index, etc. Specimens had accompanied Mr. Sullivant's 

 text in the Musci Alleghanienses, and now, from the ample stores 

 collected by him and Lesquereux, or otherwise acquired, fifty-six 

 sets of about three hundred and sixty species each were made up, 

 and all, except a few copies for gratuitous distribution, were 

 placed on sale at less than cost, for the benefit of his esteemed 

 associate. The title of the volume was Musci Boreali American! 

 quorum specimina exsiccati ediderunt W. S. Sullivant et L. Les- 

 quereux ; 1856. The value of the work insured the speedy sale of 

 the edition. A similar but larger collection, containing between 

 five and six hundred species, many of them recently gathered 

 in California by Dr. Bolander, was issued in 1865. The sets were 

 disposed of with the same unequaled liberality as before dis- 

 played. Still later, Mr. Sullivant aided his friend Mr. Austin 

 both in the study of his material and in the publication of his 

 Musci Appalachiani. 



In his Musci Cubenses, which appeared in 1861, Mr. Sullivant 

 named the species of Charles Wright's earlier acquisitions in Cuba 

 and described the new ones. These mosses were also distributed 

 in sets by the collector. His researches upon later and more ex- 

 tensive collections by Mr. Wright, in which many new species 

 were indicated, were left in the form of notes and pencil sketches 

 at his death. The same is true of an earlier collection, made by 

 Fendler in Venezuela. 



Mr. Sullivant was several times called upon to work up the 

 mosses gathered by Government exploring expeditions. Thus 

 the Bryology of Rodgers's United States North Pacific Exploring 

 Expedition was early prepared for publication by him in the 

 most elaborate manner. But, from causes over which he had no 

 control, it has never been published, although brief characters of 

 the principal new species have seen the light. The fact that 

 Sullivant's exquisite drawings of these species were not promptly 

 engraved and given to the scientific world is especially to be 

 regretted. 



In the case of the South Pacific Exploring Expedition, under 

 Commodore Wilkes, the volume on the mosses was not published 

 in his lifetime, but Mr. Sullivant issued a separate edition of his 

 portion of it in 1859. It forms a sumptuous imperial folio, the 

 letterpress having been made up into large pages, and printed on 

 paper matching that used for the twenty-six plates. The fourth 

 volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports contains Sullivant's de- 

 scriptions of the mosses collected in Whipple's Exploration, occu- 

 pying about a dozen pages, and accompanied by ten admirable 

 plates of new species. 



