Report on Botany. 



157 



made available also for the use of Columbia College. This 

 together with the extensive herbarium of Dr. Torrey will 

 place Columbia College in a most enviable position in re- 

 spect to facilities for botanical instruction. 



The opening of the western territories has made acces- 

 sible a vast and most interesting field of operations, which 

 botanists as well as other scientists have not been slow to 

 occupy. The exploring expeditions carried on under 

 the auspices of the general government have usually 

 been accompanied by a botanist or by some one whose 

 duty it was to collect and preserve specimens of the plants 

 discovered. The magnificent volume noticed in a former 

 report had its origin in one of these expeditions. The 

 botanist connected with Dr. Hayden's geological expedi- 

 tion in the Yellowstone region the past season, unlike some 

 of his predecessors, did not make collections of flowering 

 plants alone, but also included in his acquisitions numer- 

 ous specimens of cryptogamic plants. Private enterprise 

 also extends its researches into these distant localities as 

 is attested by the collections of Mr. Elihu Hall in 1871 and 

 of Dr. C. C. Parry in 1872. 



The additions to our own State herbarium the past year, 

 are two hundred and sixteen species by collection, forty- 

 eight by contribution, two hundred and sixty-four in all. 

 This herbarium in the last five or six years has grown 

 from a representation of about fourteen hundred species, 

 of which about fifty were cryptogamic, to one of about 

 three thousand five hundred species, nearly two thousand 

 of which are cryptogamic plants. Of these there are in 

 round numbers seventy-five ferns and fern allies, three 

 hundred mosses, sixty liverworts, one hundred and sixty 

 lichens, one hundred algse and thirteen hundred fungi. It 

 is with no little gratification that we refer to this collection, 

 not because of its magnitude, for it claims to illustrate the 

 botany of this one state alone, but because of its com- 



