— 53 — 



State only about 775 species from over eighty counties represented in his cata- 

 logue. 



Some five or six years after Prof. Tracy published his catalogue Prof. Trel- 

 ease called my attention to the Pech Catalogue, which I then saw for the first 

 time. The next mention of the Pech Catalogue is by Sargent^ in his second 

 paper on Crataegus in Missouri, page 79, where he says "The only publication 

 devoted to the flora of northeastern Missouri, appeared in a list of the plants 

 growing at Louisiana, on the Mississippi River, not far below Hannibal, in a 

 'Catalogue of the United States Plants in the Department of Agriculture,' issued 

 by Isaac Newton, the authorship of which has been ascribed to Mr. F. Pech." 

 In this paper Prof. Sargent commemorates Pech's name in Crataegus Pechiana, 

 a species of the viridis group. 



Excepting these two references, all mention of Pech's list seems to be want- 

 ing. The title of the list is " Catalogue of the United States Plants in the De- 

 partment of Agriculture" and the date written in by Pech himself is November 

 I, 1866. 



The preface to the Catalogue states that the Department of Agriculture 

 having received a donation of a large collection of plants gathered in different 

 states which, while not stating positively that this was the first collection of 

 plants in the museum of the Department, plainly shows every evidence that it 

 was the initial collection, and itis signed by Isaac Newton, Commissioner. 



No mention is made of the donor in the preface of this Catalogue, nor is F. 

 Pech's name anywhere mention ed in it, and it is to F. Pech himself that we owe 

 the knowledge that he is the author of it, for I have seen two copies of it from 

 Pech himself and inscribed "Pech Catalogue" with his autograph and regards 

 to those to whom it was presented. The Catalogue is an obscure little pamphlet 

 with pale blue covers, containing 25 pages of names of plants, the pages averaging 

 about 65 names, so that the total number of species for Missouri as listed is not 

 far short of twelve hundred, including the Musci, Hepatics, Lichens, Fungi, and 

 Algae, of which there is a large representation, and for that day and time it was 

 a won derful achievement. 



As already noted, this Catalogue remained unknown, or almost unknown, 

 -up to the present time, and the reason for this was that the Department of Agri- 

 culture buildings were shortly afterwards destroyed by fire, and all copies of the 

 Catalogue, except those distributed by Pech, and the entire Pech collection of 

 plants and other natural history objects were lost. No trace of the Catalogue 

 of the Pech collection of plants now remains at Washington, D. C, and the iden- 

 tity of his species must forever remain a question of doubt. 



It is the mosses of this Catalogue that I particularly wish to discuss, and 

 these number seventy-eight, of which sixty-six are from Missouri, a long list for 

 Missouri at that time — and, indeed, a long list for any state. i\s but few of my 

 readers have ever seen this Catalogue I herewith reproduce the list of mosses 

 exactly as given, except that for convenience I have prefixed numbers to the 

 names. 



^Sargent, C. S. Crataegus in Missouri II. Ann. Rpt. Mo. Bot. Gard. 33: 78. Feb. 14 

 1912. 



