BESSEY: MYCOLOGY 243 



shorter periods his students were A. II. Smith, Edwin Butterworth Mains, j\Ia- 

 rion Lee Lohman, Delbert Swartz, Bessie Bernice Kanouse, Adelia McCrea, Dow 

 Vawter Baxter, Lee Bonar, Frank Boyd Cotner, Lewis Edgar Wehmeyer. 



William A. Murrill worked at the New York Botanical garden from 1904 

 to 1924, as assistant curator and curator of the mycological herbarium. He was 

 the instigator, and from its first number until 1924 the editor, of Mycologia, 

 which was the successor to, but not connected with, the Journal of Mycology. 

 The Journal ceased publication upon the death of Professor W. A. Kellerman, 

 its editor. In addition to his curatorial and editorial duties Dr. Murrill wrote 

 many articles for Mycologia and for other journals, mostly upon the Polypora- 

 ceae and Agaricaceae. He also wrote several local floras of the Agaricaceae 

 (1912, 1911-1918)^ He wrote most of Volume 9 and part of Volume 10 of the 

 North American Flora (1907-1916) including most of the Polyporaceae and the 

 Boletaceae and part of the Agaricaceae. In addition he wrote upon the resu- 

 pinate Polyporaceae (1920-1921, 1942). Since his retirement from the New 

 York Botanical Garden he has carried on mycological studies for a number of 

 years on the Agaricaceae and Boletaceae of Florida, in affiliation with the Her- 

 barium of the University of Florida. IMurrill aroused much criticism becaiise 

 of his breaking away from the Friesian tradition of generic limits, especially in 

 the Polyporaceae, following in part the suggestions of P. A. Karsten (1879, 

 1882), in dividing the bulky genera into numerous smaller, more compact ones 

 based upon color and various anatomical and chemical characters that Fries 

 did not consider important enough to warrant making generic distinctions. It 

 is true that not all Murrill's ideas have been universally adopted, but some 

 modern mycologists such as Singer (1949), Bondarzew (Bondarzew and Singer, 

 1941), William Bridge Cooke (1940), A. H. Smith (1938) go even further; in the 

 writer's opinion, correctly. 



The more conservative systematic mycologists for the greater part of a cen- 

 tury, out of their great respect for Fries, did not venture to divide the single 

 large genus Agaricus into smaller genera until Fries, himself, began to make this 

 division. Lucien Quelet, in France (1872-1875), first used most of the Friesian 

 subgenera as genera and Karsten (1879, 1882), following in the same line, added 

 a good many more. As a result of the work of these mycologists and of others, 

 between 240 and 250 genei-a of Agarics are now well defined, though not yet 

 fully acknowledged. From the Friesian genus Polyporus have been produced 

 in much the same way 40 to 60 genera. M. A. Donk of the Netherlands has 

 followed along these lines in his studies of the Hymenomycetes of that country, 

 bringing the nomenclature up to date (1928, 1931, 1933). 



Two names that have become established in connection with systematic my- 

 cology in the United States are those of Job Bicknell Ellis (b. 1829, d. 1905) 

 and Benjamin :\Iatlack Everhart (b. 1818, d. 1904) ; we find the familiar E. & E. 

 appended to descriptions of hundreds of new species. Ellis became interested 

 in fungi by entering into correspondence with Kavenel, a correspondence which 

 continued until the latter's death. Ellis' earlier collections of fungi, beginning 

 about 1870, were sent partly to Berkeley and partly to Cooke and a large num- 

 ber of species are accordingly tagged B. & E. and C. & E. As his knowledge of 

 fungi increased, he began describing new species independently. In 1875 he began 

 the distribution of centuries of exsiccati entitled North American Fungi of which 



