PBEPACE.
Copyright,
B Y S. E. CASSINO & CO.
j88^.
C. J . P E T E R S A ND SON,
ELECTROTYPERS AND STEREOTYPBRS,
14Ò HiGci St r e e t .
In 1848 William S. Sullivant published, in the first edition
of Gray’s Manual of Botany, descriptions of two hundred
and five species of Mosses and sixty-six of PIepatica3. In the
second edition of the same Manual, published in 1856, four
hundred and ten species of Mosses and one hundred and
seven of llepaticse were described by him, with the addition
of eight fine plates for thè illustration of the more important
genera* This second edition becoming soon exhausted, Mr.
Sullivant, urged by the friends of American botany to publish,
in a separiite volume, a Manual of American Mosses,
decided to begin the preparation of such a work in connection
with the present writer, who had been since 1848 his
constant assistant in bryological research. A large amount
of material had been collected, the new mosses continually
received had been examined and described, and much preparatory
labor had thus been done when, in 1872, my sight
partially failed me, and a few months later Sullivant’s noble
career was closed by death.
The bryological collections of Sullivant, together 'with his
library and his manuscript notes, had been bequeathed to the
Harvard University Ilerabrinm, and at the suggestion of Prof.
* Separate issues of both of these editions were made under the title of
“ Musei and Hepaticse of the Northern United States,” the last of wliich
reprints (containing some additions) is the work cited throughout the following
pages as “ Sullivant’s Mosses of the United States.”