EDWARD TUCKERMAN. 



during his life he always adhered to the Friesian views of classifi- 

 cation, which he preferred to those of later botanists. 



While in Europe he did not limit his botanical studies to lichens, 

 but also worked on some of the more difficult genera of phsenogams. 

 Before his return to America he contributed to Hooker's Journal 

 of Botany a paper on "Oakesia, a new genus of Empetreae," and 

 shortly after his return, in 1843, he printed privately at Schenectady 

 his "Enumeratio Methodica Caricum Quarundam," of which Pro- 

 fessor Gray says : " He displayed not only his critical knowledge 

 of the large and difficult genus Carex, but also his genius as a 

 system atizer, for this essay was the first considerable and a really 

 successful attempt to combine the species of this genus into natural 

 groups." In the American Journal of Science of the same year he 

 published " Observations on some interesting plants of New Eng- 

 land," and this was followed in 1848 and 1849 by two papers on 

 similar subjects, including an elaboration of the American species 

 of the difficult genus Potamogeton, which he was the first in this 

 country to study critically. These papers include about all that 

 was ever published by Professor Tuckerman on phsenogamic plants, 

 if we except the " Catalogue of plants growing without cultivation 

 within thirty miles of Amherst College," issued in 1875, of which he 

 prepared the list of flowering plants. But it should be added that 

 the papers already named do not comprise all that he contributed 

 to phsenogamic botany, for he furnished valuable notes on distribu- 

 tion of species to other workers in the same field, which, if they 

 were sometimes properly acknowledged, were, it is to be feared, 

 sometimes absorbed without suitable recognition. 



In 1845 he published in the Journal of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History "A further notice of some alpine and other lichenes 

 of New England," and in the same year there appeared at Cam- 

 bridge his " Enumeration of North American Lichenes, preceded 

 by a general account of lichens and of the Friesian system, together 

 with an essay on the natural systems of Oken, Fries, and End- 

 licher." In 1847 he presented to the American Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences a " Synopsis of the Lichenes of New England, the other 

 Northern States, and British America," which was issued separately 

 the following year. This work was the first attempt at a systematic 

 description and classification of all lichens known, at that time, in 

 the temperate regions of North America and may be called the 

 lichen-primer of this country. It included 295 species, of which 20 



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