Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University
Index to the Moss Herbarium of Thomas Taylor
The Taylor cryptogamic herbarium, containing mosses, hepatics
and lichens, was presented to Harvard by John Amory Lowell, who
purchased it on the advice of Asa Gray in 1849. The moss section,
here indexed, contains 4036 specimens. Taylor was born, probably
in the 1780's though the date is uncertain, in the "East Indies,"
where his father was Colonel in the East Indian Army. He attended
Trinity College, Dublin, taking the B.A. in 1807 and the M.D. in
1813/14. After practicing medicine in Dublin for about ten years,
he removed [to] Cork, and was Professor of Natural History at the
short-lived Royal Institution of that city. Before 1832 he retired
to the village of Dunkerron, near Kenmare, in County Kerry, where
he died in February 1848.
Taylor collaborated with W. J. Hooker on the first (1 January
1818) and second (early 1827) editions of Muscologia Britannica.
Other major publications were on collections of William Jameson from
Ecuador and James Drummond from Australia. The herbarium has
specimens, including isotypes, of Taylor's friends and correspondents,
particularly the Hookers, William Wilson, Dawson Turner, and Archibald
Menzies. There are smaller but valuable groups of specimens, acquired
at first or second hand, such as the 41 from the Hedwig-Schwaegrichen
herbarium, and some from the herbaria of Dillenius, Palisot de
Beauvois, and Dickson. Although it was the hepatics and lichens of