Rbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 2 May , 1900 No. 17 
THE BOSTON MYCOLOGICAL CLUB. 
JENNIE F. Conant. 
ALTHOUGH the Boston MycoLocicaL Cp has not the honor of 
being the first of its kind to be organized in this country, that distinc- 
tion belonging to the Westfield Toadstool Club of Westfield, New York, 
yet it dates from the same year. In the summer of 1895, after nu- 
merous appeals had appeared in the papers for help in the study of fungi 
as food, a few gentlemen and one lady met at Horticultural Hall and 
agreed, after some deliberation, to form a club to be known as the 
Boston Mycological Club, with the following officers: President, Julius " 
A. Palmer, Jr.; Vice-President, Wm. C. Bates; Secretary and Treas- 
urer, Hollis Webster. 
For a good many years previously experiments had been made by 
a few persistent American mycophagists, for example, by the Rev. M. 
A. Curtis, fifty years ago, and more recently by Captain Palmer and 
Professor Peck, to test the edibility of certain species recommended by 
Badham, Berkeley and other European writers, and also that of others 
not then in any list of edible kinds. Although the results of these 
experiments were made available by repeated publication, popular 
knowledge of the subject grew slowly, in spite of a deal of good- 
natured urging by these pioneers. That interest had, nevertheless, been 
aroused was shown by the welcome accorded in 1894 to articles by 
Dr. Farlow, Professor Peck and Mr. W. H. Gibson, which appeared in 
various periodicals in almost simultaneous response to the general de- 
mand for information. ‘That at last the multitude were waiting only 
for guidance before eagerly joining in a fascinatingly dangerous pursuit 
has been further shown by the rapid increase in the membership of 
the Boston Club, from the little company that first met in August five 
