190 



The Plant World. 



Of all departments of botanical literature none perhaps have 

 proven more exasperating, speaking broadly, than that devoted 

 to lichens. Small wonder that very few American botanists 

 have ever specialized in this group. The young student who 

 started with lichens as he did with other plants, bv collecting 

 what specimens he could find and then attempting to identify 

 them, was confronted with a mass of Latin description that 

 dampened his ardor, while the anatomically minded were intro- 

 duced at the outset to a body of controversial literature which, 

 to say the least, was uninspiring. Notwithstanding the contri- 

 butions of well known specialists, hints on the economic value 

 of reindeer moss and other species, duly brought out in college 

 lectures, and even their part as agents in soil building, somehow 

 the whole lot, like the Assyrian host, were all dead corpses long 

 before they were fairly ticketed and laid away. One might be- 

 come enthusiastic over anything else in the vegetable kingdom 

 but lichens. Their congenial food was gravestones, and all their 

 connections seemed to reach away "into the abysses of the un- 

 beginning past." 



None the less, at least one working botanist of the present 

 day has taken hold of this apparently forbidding group, and has 

 shown it to be one of remarkable interest, one that from the new 

 point of view may be expected to attract and reward serious 

 students. Without attempting here to review, or even summar- 

 ize, the contributions of Professor Bruce Fink, notice may be 

 taken of two recent papers in which his attention to biological 

 relations, hitherto almost wholly neglected, is shown. 



The first of these, entitled " Licheno-ecologic Studies from 

 Beechwood Camp," which appeared in the Bryologist for March 

 1909, gives a short account of the two hundred acre forest near 

 Oxford, Ohio, which has been maintained for the most part un- 

 disturbed for several generations, and now presents well-nigh 

 ideal forest conditions for both taxonomic and ecological studies. 

 A camp was first occupied in the summer of 1908, and although 

 no results of importance are ready to be made public, the account 

 of simple experiments that have been instituted with a view to 

 determining rate of development, growth, and fruit production 

 of various lichens, and to observe accurately the phenomena of 

 invasion and succession is highly suggestive. Further reports 

 will be looked for with expectant interest. 



