EDWARD TUCKERMAN. 498 



he was abroad, in the summer of 1842, to Hooker's " London 

 Journal of Botany." Unfortunately, the interesting plant 

 which he thus dedicated to his botanical associate, William 

 Oakes, who well deserved such commemoration, proved to be 

 a second species of Corema. In 1843, at Schenectady, he 

 privately printed and issued his " Enumeratio Methodica Cari- 

 cum quarundam " (pp. 21, 8vo), in which he displayed not 

 only his critical knowledge of the large and difficult genus 

 Carex, but also his genius as a systematizer ; for this essay 

 was the first considerable, and a really successful, attempt to . 

 combine the species of this genus into natural groups. It is 

 wholly in Latin, which he much affected for scientific disquisi- 

 tion as well as for technical characters, and used with facility 

 and elegance. In the same year also appeared, in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science, the first of his " Observations on some 

 interesting Plants of New England." This was followed in 

 1848 by a second, and in 1849 by a third paper in the same 

 Journal ; these containing, inter alia, his elaboration of our 

 species of Potamogeton, then for the first time critically 

 studied. These papers — with one or two in Hovey's Maga- 

 zine and elsewhere, at about the same date — may be said to 

 have ended his work in Phsenogamous botany, although his 

 interest in the subject never died out ; for when he accepted 

 the chair of botany at Amherst he began the preparation of 

 " A Catalogue of Plants growing without cultivation within 

 thirty miles of Amherst College," which he published in the 

 year 1875, the late Mr. Charles Frost of Brattleborough con- 

 tributing the lower Cryptogamia other than the Lichens. In 

 matter and form, as well as in typography (in which Profes- 

 sor Tuckerman had exquisite taste), this catalogue is one of 

 the very best. 



But it was to Lichenology that his strength, as indeed al- 

 most his whole life, was most assiduously devoted. When, 

 in his youth, the active members of the newly organized 

 Natural History Society of Boston divided among themselves 

 the work of making better known the animals, plants, and 

 minerals of Massachusetts, the study of the Lichens either 

 was assigned to him or he volunteered to undertake it. From 



