273
TEN YEARS' PROGRESS IN LICHENOLOGY
IN THE BRITISH ISLES.
(Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the Annual
Meeting on 2nd April, 1921.
By ROBERT PAULSON, F.L.S., F.R.M.S.
(With Four Plates.)
DURING the past year the Club was able to avail itself
of a favourable opportunity for acquiring, by purchase,
some 590 specimens that formed part of the lichen-herbar-
ium of the late Rev. W. Johnson, a well-known collector and keen
observer of Cryptogamic plants. As a result of this purchase
it now possesses nine fasciculi of Larbalestier's Lichen-Herbarium,
two fasciculi of his Lichenis Rarissimi, and 150 British lichens
collected by the Rev. W. A. Leighton, who did much pioneer work,
culminating in the publication of a Lichen Flora of Great Britain,
which became, and still is, indispensable to all students of British
lichens. Larbalestier, a most enthusiastic lichenologist, spent
much time in collecting lichens in the Channel Islands and in
West Ireland ; the accuracy of his keen discriminating power
is evident by reason of the number of lichens he was able to add
to the British flora.
So recently as February last the Club received a valuable
grant of duplicate lichen-specimens from the Trustees of the
British Museum, through the kind offices of Dr. A. Barton Rendle,
Keeper of the Department of Botany. This gift is of the greatest
value to the Club, for the specimens form a set of the lichens
of Epping Forest collected and named by the late Rev. J. M.
Crombie, who, until his death, was intimately connected with
the Club as an honorary member.
The acquisition of the above has augmented the number of
lichen-specimens in the Club's herbarium by 1,192, the total
number of which is now 1,500, including a few duplicates. This
large addition to the herbarium deserves more than a passing
note, and for this reason I have made it the occasion for placing
before the Club a short resume of the progress of Lichenology
during the decade 1911-1920.
It is not possible within the space of an hour to give more
than a brief outline of the salient points, although, owing to