186 Daniel Cady Eaton. 
Most of his publications relate to Ferns, but he made a 
study of the Algz and Mosses. While he printed but little 
pertaining to the Algze, he, associated with Professor W. G. 
Farlow of Harvard University and Dr. C. L. Anderson of 
California, prepared and distributed numbered sets of speci- 
mens of North American sea weeds, under the title of “ Algee 
Boreali-Americane,” a timely contribution to this department 
of our botany. It was the first considerable set authoritatively 
sent out, and is the most important of its kind yet published. 
Many of the specimens found on our Atlantic coast he collected, 
and this work with that of their preparation and the incident 
correspondence necessitated an amount of labor only appre- 
ciated by those who have attempted similar work. During the 
later years of his life he devoted more time to the Mosses, and 
for some years he had been making a critical study of the 
Sphagna, especially the North American species. In codp- 
eration with Mr. E. Faxon he was preparing sets. of specimens 
of North America Sphagna for distribution. It is a great loss 
to science that death cut short this work. He was at work on it 
to almost the very last, and the examination of the new speci- 
mens he collected last summer or received since, cheered him 
during his long and painful illness. He had been very desirous 
to obtain specimens from the far north for these sets, and the 
writer made special effort to collect such for him last summer. 
Their loss by shipwreck he deeply regretted, returning to the 
subject the last time I saw him, scarcely two weeks before his 
death, ‘“ What a pity I cannot add those Greenland specimens 
to the sets.” 
His preparation of the descriptions of the Ferns in Chapman’s 
Flora of the Southern States, in Gray’s Manual of the Botany 
of the Northern States, and in Gray’s Field and Forest Botany 
and in Brewer and Watson’s Botany of California are too well 
known to need more than reference here. 
He was careful, accurate, and intensely conscientious in all 
his botanical work. Neither time nor patient work was 
spared, if by them the conclusions arrived at might be made 
more certain and sound. He saw the number of deseribed 
species of American Ferns greatly enlarged during his career, 
of which he described about a dozen new species. His pub- 
lished work relates almost entirely to systematic botany. The 
anatomy and physiology of plants he considered a separate 
specialty, and he pursued it only so far as was necessary for an 
understanding of the completed organism. 
He was a person of keen literary and artistic tastes, and 
these profoundly influenced his scientific work. His large 
private herbarium was arranged and kept with scrupulous 
care. Hach sheet of specimens was as carefully prepared 
