242 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



Michener (see Shear and Stevens, 1917) was a contemporary of Curtis but lived 

 longer (b. 1794, d. 1887). He was particularly interested in the plants of south- 

 eastern Pennsylvania and made extensive collections, especially of fungi, of which 

 he listed some 1,200 species from Chester County. He sent many of his fungi 

 to Berkeley, some of which the latter described as new species. Perhaps Miche- 

 ner's greatest contribution to mycology was his rearrangement of the herbarium 

 of von Schweinitz which was deposited in the Philadelphia Academy of Science, 

 but in a sadly neglected condition. His own mycological collection is now in the 

 Mycological Herbarium of the United States Department of Agriculture. The 

 third of these almost contemporaneous amateur mycologists was Henry W. Ra- 

 venel (b. 1814, d. 1887). He was born and lived most of his life in South Caro- 

 lina. He collected enthusiastically, especially lichens, which he sent to Tucker- 

 man, and fungi, of which he sent large numbers to Berkeley, who described 

 many new species with the tag "B. & Rav." He published little on fungi but 

 issued five centuries of Fungi Caroliniani Exsiccati between 1853 and 1860. 

 Between 1878 and 1882, in collaboration with M. C. Cooke, he issued eight cen- 

 turies of Fungi Americani Exsicatti. 



Another somewhat later botanist who developed great interest in fungi was 

 Charles Horton Peck (b. 1833, d. 1917) who became the botanist of the New 

 York State Museum at Albany, a position he occupied from 1867-1915. He 

 wrote a series of Reports of the State Botanist from 1871 to 1913, including de- 

 scriptions of numerous species of fungi, chiefly Agarics, with many colored il- 

 lustrations. Many of the fungi described were new to science. Owing to the 

 fact that he had to depend upon the descriptions, often very meager, of the 

 European fungi and never had the opportunity to study their type specimens 

 or the species growing wild in their type localities it is not to be wondered at 

 that some of his identifications were erroneous. Sometimes he applied the name 

 of a European species to a fungus that was really an American one, or the name 

 he gave to a supposedly new species was in error because the species already 

 had a name in Europe. In spite of these mistakes, unavoidable under the cir- 

 cumstances, the result of his forty-odd j-ears of study of American fungi was 

 the description and naming and preserving in the New York State Herbarium 

 of numerous fungi. This collection has been available for study and reference 

 to the later mycologists, who could thus verify their own work. Peck's work 

 and collections have aided and inspired many mycologists, among whom may 

 be mentioned George Francis Atkinson (b. 1854, d. 1918), Calvin Henry Kauff- 

 man (b. 1869, d. 1931), Andrew Price Morgan (b. 1836, d. 1907), William Al- 

 phonso Murrill (b. 1869), Alexander Hanchett Smith (b. 1904) and many more. 



Atkinson was a member of the Botanical Department of Cornell University 

 from 1892 to 1918. His interests were broad. In systematic mycology, he worked 

 in his later years mostly upon the Agaricaceae, especially the genus Amanita. 

 As a teacher he led many graduate students into the field of mycology. 



Kauffmann was connected with the Botanical Department of the University 

 of Michigan from 1904 until his death in 1931. He published many papers, 

 chiefly on Agaricaceae, including monographs of the United States species of 

 the genera Arjnillaria (1923), Inocyhe (1924), GompMdius (1925a), Lepiota 

 (1925b), and Clitocyhe (1926). His 7nagnum opus was the Agaricaceae of Michi- 

 gan (1918). Among the many mycologists who were at one time for longer or 



