THE BRYOLOGIST 
VoL. Xin January 1910 No. i 
COE FINCH AUSTIN. 
1831=1880. 
Elizabeth G.' Britton. 
In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for April, 1880, is a brief 
account by Leo Lesquereux of Coe Finch Austin and as far as we know this 
is the only attempt to make a record of his work, except a short sketch in 
Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography for 1887. But references to 
him will be found in every book relating to North American mosses and his 
contributions to bryology extended over a period of ten years from 1870 to 
1880. 
He was one of the charter members of the Torrey Club and began his 
collections with the flowering plants, many of which are still preserved in the 
state herbarium of New Jersey at Trenton; records of the species will be 
found in the Bulletin of the Torrey Club, in the list of plants growing within 
33 miles of New York City. The first’ illustration for the Bulletin was made 
by him. As with the most of his mosses and hepatics his specimens were 
found in the vicinity of Closter, on the Palisades and in Orange County. 
New York, though he made occasional trips to the Pine barrens and other 
parts of New Jersey, and two longer journeys, one to the White Mountains 
of New Hamphire and one to Florida in March, 1878, with J. Donnell Smith. 
One of Austin’s earliest contributions was an article in the Proceedings 
of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences in 1869, containing 47 species 
of Hepaticae, and at the time of his death he was the only American author- 
ity on this group of plants. In 1S70 he issued sets of the Musci Appala- 
chiani, containing 450 numbers, and published a list of the specimens with 
numbers and localitions, of which 27 species and 50 varieties were new and' 
included many forms of Amblystegium and Drepanocladus. Notable among 
the new additions are Leskea and Mic^'ornitrium Austini, Hypnum be?'- 
genense, H. C/os bert a.ndi H. Novae Caesareae AA from his own region, near 
his home! He set an example worthy of- more followers in keen and pains- 
taking local work. In 1873 appeared his Hepaticae Boreali-Americanae 
which contained 150 specimens, 30 of which were varieties and 15 species 
not previously published. For the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia 
in 1876, he prepared four large volumes of finely selected specimens, all from 
The November Bryologist was issued November 6 , 1909, 
