— 39 - 
correspondence began in February, 1893, when the writer sent specimens to 
her asking her views regarding some of his determinations. From that time 
forward, about sixty letters were received and preserved, besides whatever 
unimportant ones may have been destroyed. In all of the discussions 
regarding species, Miss Cummings showed care and accuracy. She had 
access to the Tuckerman herbarium, and every uncertain thing was subjected 
to careful comparison before she ventured a positive statement, whether col- 
lected for her exsiccati or sent for her opinion of the species. 
This correspondence was always interesting and helpful to the writer, and 
is but one of the many instances in which Miss Cummings sacrificed herself 
without stint for the benefit of her friends. Some gleanings from these letters 
and postals received may be given here without impropriety. There was 
the very frequent appeal to try to interest others in the study of lichens, and 
the statement that she was sacrificing herself in issuing exsiccati and in her 
correspondence for the good of the science of lichenology and for the love of 
her work. As early as 1900 she wrote of being hard at work on the Alaska 
lichens, and especially the lichens of the Harriman expedition. The writer 
has since examined critically many of these Alaska specimens passed on 
by Miss Cummings and finds in them even greater evidence of careful work. 
The Pringle Mexican lichens were mentioned several times, the purpose 
being to make a series of special sets of them. This seems never to have 
been accomplished. In 1894, when the writer was inclined to turn from lich- 
enology, there was made the same earnest appeal which no doubt came to 
many another worker to continue in the work. The offers to loan literature 
and aid in any possible way continued even after the time in 1899, when 
came the first statements regarding ill health. She wrote several times of 
her work which appeared in papers by other persons, among other things, 
stating that she did all of the work on the lichens in Charles Mohr’s “ Plant 
Life of Alabama,” except the preliminary statement. 
Besides her other work, Miss Cummings found time to do a large 
amount of lichen collecting in such widely separated, portions of the United 
States as New England, Florida, Colorado and California. She also col- 
lected on adjacent islands, and I find in my herbarium an occasional speci- 
men of her collecting in Switzerland and Italy as long ago as 1887. 
Miss Cummings was conservative in all of her work. Her conservatism 
appears most plainly in her review of Dr. Albert Schneider’s “Text-book of 
Lichenology,” and in her latest and best published contribution to lichen- 
ology, “The Lichens of Alaska.” In the paper just named she clings very 
closely to the Tuckermanian view regarding genera, in . such genera as 
Buellia, Biatora and Lecanora, placing species having very different spore 
characters in the same genus. In the treatment of the Cladonias only does 
she depart to any considerable extent from Tuckerman’s method, her work 
here following Dr. Wainio more largely. The same conservative spirit 
manifests itself in her small number of new species, the two published in her 
last contribution being the only ones due to her work, though she had col- 
lected much where others seem to find new species very readily. A more 
