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ject was " The Study of Parasitic Fungi hi the United States," and in 

 considering this Dr. Clinton Hist recalled the initial lecture on " Plant 

 Diseases and Their Remedies," given before the .society twelve years 

 ago by the late Dr. James Ellis Humphrey of the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station. The influence of that address of so long 

 ago and annual consideration of the matter before the society by other 

 speakers was briefly reviewed. Dr. Clinton then treated his subject 

 matter from an historical viewpoint. Dealing especially with its early 

 history in this country and the conditions found to-day. He said in 

 part : 



" The study of fungi in this country began less than one hundred 

 years ago. Of course, this is not strange since at that time the country 

 was comparatively undeveloped and the Government in its infancy. 

 Turning to Europe, however, we find about the same condition of 

 affairs. Previous to the nineteenth century, knowledge of fungi was 

 confined almost entirely to the conspicuous forms, such as the toad- 

 stools. With the perfection of the microscope during the first quarter 

 of the century, there was thrown open for minute examination those 

 numerous parasitic and saprophytic forms that previously had been 

 seen only in their gross aspect or had not been seen at all. While the 

 microscopic study was taken up in this country scarcely later than in 

 Europe, yet, because of our infancy, these preliminary investigations 

 were very limited, practically the work of a single investigator. In 

 considering the history of the subject in the United States, it seems to 

 me that there have been three periods in its development. These, 

 while not sharply marked off from each other, possess enough pecu- 

 liarity to distinguish them in a general way. They may be briefly 

 characterized as the period of collection, of instruction and of investi- 

 gation. 



" The first period was characterized by the collector who merely 

 listed the specimen he found or gave vague descriptions to those that 

 proved to be new. In point of time this extended from 1812 to 1870, 

 or from the return of Schweinitz to this country, to the establishment 

 at Harvard University of a department of'cryptogamic botany. Louis 

 von Schweinitz was a native Bavarian minister, who after receiving 

 his higher education in Germany returned to this country in the 

 interests of his particular sect. While I have little doubt that he 

 was a useful servant in his accepted calling. I have no doubt whatever 

 that he was an unusually good and active botanist. In 1834 he pub- 

 lished his most important treatise on ' North American Fungi' which 

 lists about three thousand species he had observed in the Carolinas and 

 Pennsylvania. 



" The immediate successor to Schweinitz in time and importance 

 was a Massachusetts man. also a minister. Moses Ashley Curtis, who 

 was horn at Stoekbridge and educated at Williams. In 18o<> he first 

 went South, as tutor, to Wilmington. N". C. Like Schweinitz, he was 

 a great lover of nature as well as of nature's God, and so he soon began 

 his study of the very interesting flora of this State and this was 

 extended as his later ministerial labours took him to different places in 

 it. and in South Carolina. Curtis was what your enthusiastic friends 

 of the Boston Mycological Society mighl term "somewhat of a myco- 

 phagist.' At least he gave us along list of the edible mushrooms of 

 that region and during the Civil War earnestly advocated their use by 



