An Enumeration Of North American Lichenes

Author : Edward Tuckerman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781332124893
Total Pages : 70 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (248 download)

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Download or read book An Enumeration of North American Lichenes, With a Preliminary View of the Structure and General History of These Plants, and of the Friesian System written by Edward Tuckerman and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from An Enumeration of North American Lichenes, With a Preliminary View of the Structure and General History of These Plants, and of the Friesian System: To Which Is Prefixed, an Essay on the Natural Systems of Oken, Fries, and Endlicher The preface, as the last part of an author's work, gives him an opportunity to review what he has written, to express his own sense of its merits and defects, and to put it in a true light. It is, then, ray wish to introduce the preliminary sketch as valuable only for what it presents of truth of the systems it treats of, and as making no claim to other consideration. I feel too deeply the difficulty and the importance of accurate knowledge, to be willing to venture any opinions of my own on the topics of this paper without hesitation. Such reflections as occurred to me in writing it I have however set down, in the order in which they arose, and the manner which then suggested itself. The whole is very imperfect, but it contains what it purports to, and I am unable to devote more time to its adornment. What follows is a View, as complete, so far as matter goes, as I can make it, of the present received doctrine of structure and metamorphosis in Lichenes, with such portions of the general history of these plants as seemed appropriate. There is nothing, to my knowledge, in English, which fully presents the views of the modern Swedish and German lichenists, nor are such introductions as that of Fries to his "Lichenographia Reformata" fairly appreciable by any but quite advanced and experienced cryptogamists. The whole of this part of the treatise is but a shadowing out of the Friesian method, with such other matter as I could bring together from Meyer, Wallroth, Eschweiler, and Luyken. The System, at the end, comprises, it will be seen, a complete conspeetus of all the European genera, and also a synopsis of the North American species which are satisfactorily known to me. This affords a tolerable view of lichenose (and, to some extent, byssaceous) vegetation in the northern half of North America, but it is, I fear, much less complete as respects the southern, except in so far as species and genera are common (which to great extent they undoubtedly are) to both districts. In the extreme south, some tropical genera are probably more or less represented, and no doubt numerous species occur, which are not found either at the north or in Europe. The whole number of our species here set down, excluding Byssaceae, is 209, which is about 70 more than the largest and only general American catalogue contains; the species in this last being reckoned according to the principles which are expressed in my own. We have, then, as yet known, 43 species less than Britain, 61 less than Switzerland, 105 less than Sweden, and 111 less than France. In fact, however, it is quite probable that we have many more species than the richest European district, on the whole, if not in all particular genera. I will add a single remark, which was meant to have been introduced as a note to a passage of Oken, afterwards left out. His system of materialism is so simple, so old, and so entirely hypothetical, that a naturalist may be pardoned the unwillingness to meddle with it at all. This 1 will do only to notice what follows, especially as it gives me the opportunity to reply in some harmonious words of another, who is less known than, perhaps, he deserves to be. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com