527 
Proposed he would get at best an indistinct notion of relationships 
and coérdinations. While nature does not draw many hard and 
fast lines, it is still possible to present in a somewhat simple man- 
ner a conspectus of the groups of living things she does develop. 
It is the purpose of this paper to suggest some methods in which 
these relations can be more satisfactorily presented to our students, 
with less possibility of giving them a confused conglomeration of 
unrelated categories. 
In order to show more clearly the extent of this confusion I 
have selected for an illustration the group of the Ascomycetes, 
with particular notice of the allies of eziza, and will show in par- 
allel columns their arrangement in groups by some of the mod- 
€rn authors. I select this group for several reasons, among others 
the fact that it has been recently treated by several specialists in 
fungi, although most or all of them are: naturally more or less in- 
fluenced by the extensive researches of Brefeld. It is also a group 
that contains very diverse elements and permits of numberless 
combinations based on real or supposed relationships. (See table 
next page.) : 
Of the above statements of a system, that of Von Tafel, con- 
Servatively cautious and indefinite, is entirely silent on the group 
names; coérdinate groups only are recognized and these may 
Probably be taken as the conception of these relations held by 
Brefeld himself. 
Rehm consistently uses the term “ Familie ’’ as subordinate to 
“ Ordnung,” but complicates his system by the introduction of 
two additional groups between order and family, “ Hauptordnung” 
and “ Unterordnung.” His family names lack uniformity as seen 
in the examples Exoasci, Dothidiaceae, Ascoboleae. In fact the 
termination -aceae is used by him for groups of at least four dif- 
ferent ranks, as: Hysteriaceae (Ordnung) Pesizaceae (Hauptord- 
nung), Sphaeriaceae (Unterordnung), and /ypocreaceae (Familie). 
_ Although Schroeter does not so characterize each group distinc- 
tively as “order” or “ family ; ’’ their rank is clearly implied in the 
context and the termination -aceae is consistently used for the 
family. His ordinal groups, though mostly natural ones, lack uni- 
formity and are often complicated in pronunciation, ¢. g., Phacidii- 
neae, Pyrenomycetineae, Hysteriineae. 
