THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 115 



The Names of Fungi. — The harm that may come to a 

 science through ill-advised changes in the rules of nomencla- 

 ture, or in following some silly rule designed primarily to 

 cater to the vanity of the individual, is well illustrated in a 

 paper on Polyporiis put out a short time ago by a New York 

 botanizer. By breaking up the large genera into many smaller 

 ones and giving them new names, the author has been able to 

 add his own name to 332 species out of a total of 409 con- 

 sidered. Most of these plants had been known and described 

 long before he was born, but by a little tinkering with the 

 names, though adding practically nothing to our knowledge 

 of the plants, he now has his name attached to the species for- 

 ever. C. G. Lloyd naively suggests in Mycological Notes that 

 such name-tinkering comes under the head of economic botany 

 since it is by such means that the author secures his salary. 



Wooden Flowers. — Nature-faking is not confined en- 

 tirely to the yellow journals. Just listen to this from a recent 

 number of that model of propriety, the Ladies' Home Journal: 

 "They were discovered in Central America some years ago 

 growing in crevasses on the sides of Mount Agua and around 

 the edges of the huge volcano of Fuego in Guatemala. The 

 flower is thus described by one who has seen it : This unique 

 blossom is rough, but beautiful and odd and wonderful in many 

 respects. It is composed of four distinct petals, concave in 

 form, and arranged much like the petals of a half-blown rose. 

 The outside of these petals or divisions is covered with thick 

 bark like an ordinary tree ; inside the hard surface is indented 

 with lines that follow each other in the most delicate tracery, 

 like the veins in the petals of some flowers. The flower meas- 

 ures almost twelve inches across and is borne on a lip:ht, stronsf 

 stem of solid wood about a foot long, covered with heavy bark. 

 Stem and flower are dark brown in color and grow on trees of 

 large size." We are quite willing to admit that this flower is 



