PREFACE. 
With this Enumeration I terminate my thirty years’ labor on the 
New Bedford Lichens. Such lists are not usually considered of much 
impoi'tance. But the region has been thoroughly explored; its 
Lichen flora is comparatively rich for the area included, and contains 
a number of new and interesting plants; and as it is not likely that 
any one will go over it again, it seems worth while to make the 
record of it. 
The region explored, bounded on the south bv the waters of Buz¬ 
zard’s Bay, embraces a distance of from eight to ten miles from the 
city of New Bedford, or what could be conveniently covered in a day’s 
walk. But excursions have been made, as holidays permitted, to the 
Vineyard Islands, Nantucket, and Cape Cod, and especially to the 
vicinity of Weymouth and Quincy, on the side of Massachusetts Bay, 
whose maritime rocks afforded some Lichens not found elsewhere. 
But I have not been able to explore the Quincy ledges and the Blue 
Hills of the same region so thoroughly as I could have desired. 
The New Bedford region is low, with no considerable elevations, 
and its chief peculiarity is its extensive cypress swamps : ( Cupressus 
thyoides.) This, with white and pitch pine, red cedar, and hemlock 
spruce, form its cone-bearing vegetation; while the deciduous-leaved 
trees are represented by a number of oaks, ash, elm, red maple, white, 
yellow, and black birch, &c., and a variety of shrubs. There are a 
few ledges of granitic rocks, but the maritime rocks are mostly only 
boulders not rich in lichens. The region about Weymouth and Nan- 
tasket is much richer in this respect, and is the chief source of the 
maritime lichens, especially in Verrucarta. Of late years the clear¬ 
ing of the forests, the quarrying of the ledges, and the breaking up 
of the boulders, have tended to the destruction of Lichens. The 
largest cypresses have gone to the migratory steam saw-mill; the 
beeches went to the plane factory; and the hollies, once abundant, 
were converted into knick-nacks, so that few of any size remain : 
while the rocks and boulders exist only in the foundations of houses 
and factories. The enumeration includes fifty-six Genera, and three 
hundred and sixty-nine species of Lichens, of which thirty-nine were 
new when first discovered. Several of these have been found only 
in single specimens, and others are extremely rare; so that it is 
doubtful if any one could go over the ground again and collect as 
many species. 
I take this opportunity to express my regret that the American 
professors of botany have so generally accepted the “ Schwendener 
