[Vol. 1 

 194 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 



Colors of specimens were noted and recorded during the first 

 years of my work by comparison with Saccardo's 'Chromo- 

 taxia' in accordance with liis descriptive terms. Recently I 

 have been using Ridgway's 'Color Standards and Nomen- 

 clature/ 1912, which has a greater variety of colors useful in 

 the characterization of the species of Thelephoracece. 



In my own work with collections of living fungi I am endeav- 

 oring to gather for each species a spore collection on a glass 

 slip. The spores adhere well so that they may be covered by 

 paper and preserved in the envelope with the dried specimens 

 from which the spores were obtained. Such collections give 

 the exact color and dimensions of mature spores. These dimen- 

 sions are generally rather larger than those obtained from spores 

 of sectional preparations of dried herbarium specimens. The 

 spores of dried specimens, i. e., those remaining attached to the 

 specimens, are probably too immature to be of normal size, and 

 sometimes there are so few of them that one must exercise 

 caution to avoid errors due to the study of spores foreign to the 

 fungus. 



Latex exists in many species of several of the genera and is 

 more abundant and conspicuous in some species than in others, 

 and its containing elements often extend to the hymenial surface. 

 When specimens are in the vegetative condition, injury to the 

 hymenium may liberate the fluid contents of the latex bodies 

 so that this fluid exudes in colored drops at the edges of the 

 wound, or discolors the bruised surface. For many of our species 

 there is a lack of data concerning the color of this fluid or 

 the discoloration. The latex bodies are pale brown in micro- 

 scopic preparations made by my methods and must not be con- 

 fused with setse or cj^stidia. Latex is well shown in Stereum 

 spadiceum, S. sanguinolentum, and Corticium lactescens. 



There has been a disposition on the part of some authors to 

 regard the Thelephoracece as not sharply separated from the 

 Hyphomycetes. The specimens which I have collected, in striv- 

 ing to find all the Thelephoracece of my collecting region, and the 

 specimens received from my correspondents afl'ord no embar- 

 rassment in recognizing the most hypochnoid species of Thele- 

 phoracece by the basidia which characterize the families of 

 Hymenomycetes in general. 



