NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Society of Natural History in 1838-39, the year after he graduated 

 at Union College, when he was only twenty-one years of age. This 

 was followed by a second paper in 1840, "A Further Enumeration 

 of some New England Lichenes," and a third in 1841, "Further 

 Notice of some New England Lichenes." These papers, it will be 

 noticed, were the work of a young man who had studied only in 

 this country, and relate to a group of plants which, up to that time, 

 can hardly be said to have been studied at all by American botanists ; 

 for, if we except Halsey's " Synoptical View of the Lichens growing 

 in the Vicinity of the city of New York," the references to lichens 

 in works by American botanists consisted of lists of species deter- 

 mined by Europeans from specimens sent to them and published 

 often without the names of authorities, and too frequently with 

 glaring typographical errors. Tuckerman's papers, even the ear- 

 liest, are full of critical notes on structure and distribution, giving 

 the results of his own explorations, especially in the mountainous 

 regions of New England, whose lichen-flora he was the first to in- 

 vestigate. 



The most important event of his life, botanically considered, was 

 his journey to Sweden in 1841, where he met Elias Fries, professor 

 of botany at Upsala, the leading lichenologist of his time, and, after 

 Linnaeus, the most distinguished of Sweden's many distinguished 

 botanists. Thirty years later, when the writer was at Upsala, Pro- 

 fessor Fries, then a venerable man of eighty with undiminished 

 mental vigor, recalled the days when the enthusiastic young Amer- 

 ican was at Upsala and related how, when walking together on the 

 famous avenue near the university, Tuckerman discovered a species 

 of lichen which he, the authority on lichens, had not seen there 

 before. The visit to Fries was important because it enabled Tucker- 

 man to acquire, if one may say so, the traditions of the science. In 

 some branches of cryptogamic botany it is almost a necessity that 

 an American should see the species of Europe under the guidance 

 of a botanist trained on the spot if he would clearly recognize the 

 same species when they occur in America. There is an indescrib- 

 able something, especially in lichens, which certainly is not and 

 probably could not be laid down in books. It is fortunate for our 

 lichenologists that Tuckerman was able to transfer to America and 

 perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic the ideas of classification 

 and specific limitations derived from Fries himself. Certainly 



