nomic. It is doubtless due to the fact that most of Professor 

 Underwood's work dealt with groups having few economic rela- 



generally known. The writer is better informed/through long 

 and intimate acquaintance, and has been for several years past 

 impressed with a belief that he contemplated some important 

 publication on economic botany. 



During the entire period that these other studies, so fruitful of 

 results, were occupying his attention, Professor Underwood was 

 making steady progress in his investigations of the ferns. It is 

 this which we regard as his special work, and it is to it that we 

 must look for our best knowledge of him as a scholar. We have 

 seen how, in the fourth edition of his fern manual, he broke from 

 old traditions and thenceforth pursued his work with greater 

 freedom to discover the truth and intelligibly present it. It was 

 a momentous change, and one that marks the beginning of his 

 best work. It gave to his views concerning the inter-relations 

 of the North American ferns that unique value, the recognition 

 of which weighs us down with the special sense of our loss, in 

 that we shall never see the full results of its influence in their 



as forward in his researches, one of which was represented by a 

 n-ihVol paper published in ,s ™ "" + h >* """><■" "<" <'"<■"" r,™™.=»ri 



American species as possiDie identical wun European congeners 

 . . . ; (2) the more or less blind acceptance of European writers 

 on American plants as ' authorities.' " This position was more 

 definitely stated a year later in a paper entitled " Some Features 

 of Future Fern Study." Herein he refers to observations care- 

 fully recorded at Kew in 1898, and treats of the advance that 



