IN AMERICA i6i 



Synopsis Fungoriim in America Boreali media degentium. 

 Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 4: 141-317. PL ig. 18J4. This work 

 notices 3098 species of American Fungi. 



The next American collector of note was an Episcopalian 

 clergyman, Moses A. Curtis (1808-1872), who was a native of 

 Massachusetts, but whose mycological work was largely accom- 

 plished in North Carolina, where he served his church on Sun- 

 days and spent the week days driving over the country in search 

 of fungi and other plants. He divided his extensive collections 

 with Rev. M. J. Berkeley, of England, by whom they were mostly 

 named and published in various papers, mainly in the first four 

 volumes of Grevillea ( 1 872-1 876), undertheir joint names. These 

 species are usually referred to as the " B. & C. species," and 

 have been a source of very much uncertainty to later workers 

 because of the brief imperfect descriptions, rarely extending be- 

 yond two short lines of Latin. The difficulty is greatly increased 

 by the fact that the type specimens are in Berkeley's collection at 

 the Jloyal Botanic Gardens at Kew,''^ and many of them are 

 small and scrapp\ . 



Curtis received numerous specimens from various other collec- 

 tors in various parts of the country, who occasionally picked up 

 specimens of the more conspicuous fungi in connection with the 

 field study of the higher plants which mainly absorbed their interest. 

 Among these were: Beaumont and Peters (18 10-1888) in Alabama, 

 Lapham (1811-1875) in Wisconsin, Charles Wright (1811-1885) 

 in Connecticut, who afterwards collected extensively the fungi of 

 Cuba, Sprague (1823- ) in Massachusetts, Olney (18 12-1878) 

 in Rhode Island, Michener (1794-1887) in Pennsylvania and 

 Ravenel (18 14-1887) in South Carolina. The last named botan- 

 ist deserves a more extended notice. During the period 1852- 

 1 860, he distributed in five fascicles the first series of exsiccati or 

 dried specimens of fungi issued in this country under the title 

 Fimgi Caroliniaiii Exsiccati. These are much more valuable 

 than the series later issued jointly with M. C. Cooke, under the 



■^ Curtis' own collection is preserved in the Cr}^'ptogamic laboratory of 

 Harvard University, where the duplicates are somewhat more accessible than 

 the originals at Kew. The Harvard collection also includes the extensive 

 herbarium of Professor W. G. Farlow, containing one of the largest series 

 of European exsiccatae to be found in this country. 

 II 



