﻿Memorial of Edward Tuckerman. 5 



unusual words is generally felicitous ; but sometimes the state- 

 ments are so hedged about and interpenetrated by qualifica- 

 tions or reservations, and so pregnant with subsidiary although 

 relevant considerations, that they are far from easy reading. 

 Like nests of pill-boxes, they are packed into least bulk ; but 

 for practical use they need to be taken apart. 



That Professor Tuckerman could write idiomatic and clear- 

 flowing English upon occasion, the delightful introduction to 

 his edition of Josselyn's " New England's Earities " demon- 

 strates; and in the framing of botanical descriptive phrases, 

 Latin or English, in which clearness and brevity with just 

 order and proportion are desiderata, he had hardly a superior. 



As has been said, his botanical model was Elias Fries. He 

 had visited him at Upsala, and he kept up a correspondence 

 with him to the end of the venerable botanist's life. He caught 

 from Fries, or he developed independently, and cultivated to 

 perfection, that sense of the value of the indefinable something 

 which botanists inadequately express by the term " habit," 

 which often enables the systematist to divine much further than 

 he can perceive in the tracing of relationships. Upon this, in 

 direct reference to Fries, and with a use of the term that seems 

 to correlate it with " insight," Tuckerman remarks : " So great 

 is the value of Habit in minds fully qualified to apprehend and 

 appreciate its subtleties, that such minds may not only antici- 

 pate what the microscope is to reveal, but help us to under- 

 stand its revelations." It should be remembered, however, 

 that when Fries did the best of his work there were no micro- 

 scopes of much account ; and it is probable that Tuckerman 

 would have done more, and perhaps have reached some differ- 

 ent conclusions, if he had earlier and more largely used the 

 best instrumental appliances of the time. One advantage, how- 

 ever, of his way of study, and his philosophical conception of 

 an ideal connection of forms which are capable of a wide play 

 of variation, was that he took broad views of genera and 

 species. So he was quite unlike that numerous race of spe- 

 cialists who, in place of characterizing species, describe speci- 

 mens, and to whom "genus" means the lowest recognizable 

 group of species. 



As to the vexed question in Lichenology, which carne to 

 him rather late and seemed to threaten the stability of his 

 work, it was most natural that, at his time of life, he did not 

 take kindly to the algo-fungal notion of Lichens, and that he 

 was convinced of its falsity by questionable evidence. 



Professor Tuckerman was much more than an excellent spe- 

 cialist. Happily, he did not become such until he had laid a 

 good foundation, for the time, in general systematic botany ; 

 and his early studies show that he was a man of scholarly cul- 



