IV 



PREFACE 



including North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, 

 Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, 

 and the northern portion of Florida; (3) the Rocky Mountain 

 region, including the remainder of the western United States 

 and Canada with the exception of states bordering on the 

 Pacific Ocean; (4) the far West, including California, Oregon, 

 Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska; and (5) tropical 

 North America, including Mexico, Central America, southern 

 Florida, the Bermudas, the West Indies, and all other islands 

 between North America and South America with the exception 

 of Trinidad. 



In all these regions, there is an abundance of work still to 

 be done before our knowledge of the polypores is complete, and 

 it is believed that the publication of a series of books treating the 

 species of each region separately will stimulate effort in this 

 direction. 



The terms here used to express the abundance of a species are 

 "rare" or "occasional," "rather frequent," "frequent," "rather 

 common," "common," "very common," and "extremely 

 common." For the sake of brevity, certain liberties have been 

 taken with the term "brown," especially in the keys, where it is 

 often used as a general term for some shade of yellowish-brown 

 or brown. In the same way, allowances must be made for the 

 term "throughout" when used to indicate occurrence, which 

 does not imply the actual presence of a given species on every 

 snowcapped mountain or every treeless prairie within the region. 



The author visited the Pacific coast in the autumn and winter 

 of 1911 and obtained a representative collection of the polypores 

 occurring there. Additional collections by Zeller, McMurphy, 

 Harper, House, Abrams, Oleson, Hedgcock, Humphrey, Graves, 

 Meinecke, Owens, and the instructors and students of the botan- 

 ical department of the University of California have added much 

 to our knowledge of the western species and their distribution. 

 The older literature relating to the region is comparatively 

 worthless because most of the specimens are lost. 



W. A. MURRILL. 

 NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN. 

 January 15, 1915. 



