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Musci Appalachiani and Hepaticae boreali-americanae exsiccatae
by C. F. Austin
"He was so infatuated with the love of nature in all forms that if he could study unmolested he knew no cold, heat, fatigue, or hunger." —Sarah Austin Demarest
Coe Finch Austin loved nothing more than to walk through fields and woods collecting and and observing nature. Born in 1831 in western New Jersey, he grew up on farms and learned his botany at local schools. He studied science and for brief periods made his living teaching or traveling from town to town lecturing and demonstrating electrical apparatuses.
C.F. Austin
He settled in Closter, New Jersey, near New York City, and began collecting extensively in that area and in the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. He met John Torrey and through him became curator of the Herbarium at Colombia College from 1859 to 1863. There he had the task of organizing and mounting Torrey's herbarium, but after a series of disagreements with Torrey, Austin resigned. He then met William Sullivant, the authority on American mosses and hepatics at that time, and came to rely on him for books, identifications, encouragement, and editing as well as income. Sullivant paid for most of Austin's collecting and publications from 1864 onward.
Austin rarely held a steady job, and people often found him capable but independent and impatient. His daughter writes:
"Many positions of profit were offered him, but all were rejected for fear that their acceptance would interfere with his favorite study..."
So he and his family tried to make ends meet on his income from lecturing and collecting.
During his lifetime, Austin was well respected by his fellow scientists. He corresponded with all the other prominent botanists of his day, published many papers on mosses, was viewed as the leading American authority on mosses and liverworts, and was a founding member of the Torrey Botanical Club.
Austin published two important works of exsicattae, copies of which are in the Brooklyn herbarium: The Musci Appalachiani (1870) and its supplement (1878), containing a total of 550 moss specimens, and the Hepaticae boreali-americanae exsicattae (1873), containing 150 liverworts.
After his death, the remaining copies of Austin's exsicattae were sold by Leo Lesquereux to help support Austin's family. Isaac Martindale, a collector and friend of Austin's from Camden, purchased the Austin Herbarium, which later became part of the herbarium of the National Arboretum in Beltsville, Maryland.
References
The best account of Austin's life and work is "A sketch of the life of Coe Finch Austin," by his daughter Sarah Austin Demarest, published in Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 17, 31-38.
Leo Lesquereux published a short notice in Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 7: 38, 39, in 1880.
Elizabeth Britton published a remembrance of Austin with a list of his publications in The Bryologist 13: 1-4.