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became most widely known and justly famous. This very diffi- 
cult branch of botany had few votaries in Curtis’s time, and there 
was no text-book on the subject published in. America. ° Pro- 
vided, however, with the two well-known works of Schweinitz, 
Curtis addressed himself to what was for him a labor of love. He 
was painstaking and accurate in his methods, and the microscopic 
work necessary for the determination of species became with him 
a triumph of skill. Few were the botanists with whom he could 
compare specimens or exchange notes. _ He pursued this specialty 
without the stimulus now offered by special societies, and for the 
greater part of his career absolutely without an audience. It was 
intense love for the work which led him up to the highest station 
occupied by any American botanist. Dr. Curtis gave particular 
attention to the edible species of fungi. He communicated to the 
“ Gardeners’ Chronicle” for October 9th, 1869, an article on the 
“Edible Fungi of North Carolina,” and left in manuscript a very 
complete illustrated work on “Esculent Fungi.” Every one 
knows the palatable and wholesome character of the common 
mushroom or pink gill, but few are aware that there are other 
kinds growing in our fields and woods that are more finely 
flavored and just as wholesome. In his catalogue of the plants of 
North Carolina, Curtis indicates 111 species of edible fungi known 
to inhabit that State, and he remarks elsewhere that he has no 
doubt that there exist 40 or 50 more. 
In a letter to Berkeley, of England, Curtis writes: “In Octo- 
ber, 1866, while on the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee, 
although with little leisure for examination during the two days 
Spent there, I counted 18 species of edible fungi. Of the four or 
five species that I collected for the table, all who partook of them 
declared them most emphatically delicious. On my return 
home, while stopping a few hours at a station in Virginia, I gath- 
fred eight good species within a hundred yards of the depot. 
d so it seems to be throughout the country. Hill and plain, 
mountain and valley, fields and pastures, swarm with a profusion 
°f good nutritious fungi which are allowed to decay where they 
ati up, because people do not know how, or are afraid, to use 
em,” : 
In 1867 the State published as a part of the Geological and 
