STUDY OF MOSSES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27427, 13 August 1954, Page 10

STUDY OF MOSSES

Young U.S. Botanist’s Research VISIT TO N.Z. UNDER FULBRIGHT GRANT To continue a comparative study of flora in the north and south temperate zones, an American student is visiting Canterbury University College is Mr Raymond E. Hatcher, of Illinois, who will remain in New Zealanu un.ii next April as a Fulbright scholar. Although he is only 23, Mr Hatcher has already had considerable field experience. After graduating bachelor

of arts from the Southern Illinois University, he did a thesis for his master of science degree on certain groups of flora in Northern, Central, and South America. He received the higher degree last June from the University of Cincinnati, and left soon afterwards for New Zealand. The primitive plants—mosses and liverworts—are Mr Hatcher’s special field in botany.. After his South American research, he has become more interested in them from an evolutionary point of view, and hopes to be able to complete a world-wide study eventually. “New Zealand has many plants peculair to this group, and the prospects here are extremely interesting,” Mr Hatcher said yesterday. This country should provide some more links in the chain of plant distribution. Some, in the group of his study, were found on the southern most tip of South America, and related forms were believed to exist in New Zealand. Mr Hatcher intends to make investigations in most parts of New Zealand. He will spend a good deal of time in the Southern Alps, and he hopes to be able to visit Fiordland. It is fortunate, Mr Hatcher thinks, that his studies at Canterbury College will be directed by Dr. W. R. Philipson, head of the botany department, who has also done considerable research on the plants of South America.