INTRODUCTION 3 



Four principles are considered to be essential for the conversion of 

 mycology into an inclusive and objective science reared upon a secure 

 foundation. In a word, these are usage, uniformity, statistics and experi- 

 ment. It is evident that the first already constitutes an approach to coopera- 

 tion, but it lacks conscious direction and to some degree both definiteness 

 and momentum. Furthermore, it sometimes rests upon average rather than 

 optimum values, and then requires to be transmuted into the best usage. The 

 greatest service of the latter is to bring about the highest degree of uni- 

 formity in treatment and result compatible with the facts, in short, to insure 

 those objective values that alone can be permanent. For securing these, 

 statistical and experimental methods are indispensable, though it is perhaps 

 an adequate commentary upon the present status of systematic mycology to 

 say that such methods are all but unknown to it. As indicated later, practices 

 in the use of criteria have grown up with little or no scrutiny or question 

 and with but slight endeavor to render them consistent or dependable. No 

 one possesses any real knowledge of the relative merits of criteria and yet 

 every working mycologist continues to act as though he did. However, it 

 must be recognized that experiment in vitro provides but one approach to 

 the problem, and that statistics and experiment in nature are fully as impor- 

 tant in revealing development and phylogeny. 



Probably every working mycologist recognizes and deplores the handi- 

 caps under which he must struggle, but too often he fails to recognize his 

 own contribution to them. The outstanding example of this attitude is to be 

 found in Lloyd's "Myths of Mycology," in which the author belabors many 

 a mycologist for faults much less serious than his own. Hoehnel justly 

 criticizes the inadequacy of mycological studies in the following statement 

 in the introduction to his new system: "Since the description of a genus 

 varies with the personal knowledge and the point of view of each author, 

 even when it is drawn up precisely and conscientiously, and since further 

 the great majority of descriptions are inexact, incomplete and often entirely 

 false, it is clear that a very large number of the genera considered by me 

 have been incorrectly interpreted and classified." Yet in spite of his prodi- 

 gious industry — or perhaps because of it — he has repeatedly committed 

 every one of the sins that he decries. Two of his major series of studies are 

 well-named "fragments" because of the incidental way in which new genera 

 are christened, the lack of diagnoses and indications of relationship, and 

 the frequency with which the promise of later diagnoses is forgotten. 

 Obviously, it is not sufficient to agree with Lloyd, Hoehnel, Petrak and 

 others that mycology suffers seriously from hasty and superficial methods ; 

 some procedure must be established and generally adopted that will protect 

 the mycologist from himself as well as his colleagues. 



In essence, the remedy is simple, though its application to individualists 

 will be difficult. The first step concerns the individual mycologist whose 

 duty it is to insure that his own work contains none of the defects that he 

 laments in the work of others. This demands not only meticulous thorough- 



