333 
but two or three subside into synonomy. Peck and Rex come off 
a little better, a paltry half dozen or so being graciously allowed 
to remain to each. It is George Massee, however, who has to 
bear the brunt of the crush and to suffer the most acutely. Out 
of upwards of fifty new species named and described by him, only 
a single one is allowed to live, with the exception of two or three 
which are permitted to linger along until Lister can lay his hands 
on the types. This, too, it will be observed, is in addition to the 
Rostafinskian squeeze, the sum of which leaves Massee’s volume 
in a sad state of collapse. ‘ 
If the details of Lister’s book are accurate and reliable, and the 
work is to be accepted as authoritative, then Massee’s volume is a 
tissue of mistakes and blunders and a monument of ignorance— 
and vice versa. There is scarcely an agreement in spore measure- 
ments under any of the species, and the discrepancies are often im- 
mense. For example, the spores of Lamproderma irideum Massee 
are given in one volume as II-I5 y, in the other as 6.5-8 ». The 
measurements of sporangia exhibit the same diversity. Species 
appear under one genus in the one volume and under an entirely 
different genus in the other. Didymium flavicomum of Massee be- 
comes Physarum Berkeleyi of Lister. The difference in treatment 
of the elegant genus, 777chia, by the two is something appalling ; 
the number of species described by Massee is c/zrty, while Lister 
recognizes but ¢ez. Massee’s single genus, Heterotrichia, the only 
one he ventured to establish, is incorporated in Arcyria ferruginea 
Sauter. Two of Massee’s species of Lycogala are excluded from 
the Mycetozoa! And Zudulina spumarioidea Cooke & Massee is 
declared to be nothing but the common fungus Sepedonium chrys- 
ospermum k.! The number of species that are occasionally got 
together sometimes rivals the synonomy of Rostafinski, and pos- 
sibly a righteous retribution has now fallely on him for having 
made such havoc with the species of the old writers. For ex- 
ample, in Physarum compressum A. & S.are dumped four of Rosta- 
finski’s species, two of Berkeley’s, three of Massee’s and one each 
belonging to Balfour, Phillips and McBride. Olgonema nitens 
Libert is made a dumping place for eight different species, and he 
seems to have seriously considered whether he shouldn’t dump the 
whole into Ziichia affinis De B. 
