527 



proposed he would get at best an indistinct notion of relationships 

 and coordinations. While nature does not draw many hard and 

 fast lines, it is still possible to present in a somewhat simple man- 

 ner a conspectus of the groups of living things she does develop. 

 It is the purpose of this paper to suggest some methods in which 

 these relations can be more satisfactorily presented to our students, 

 with less possibility of giving them a confused conglomeration of 

 unrelated categories. 



In order to show more clearly the extent of this confusion I 

 have selected for an illustration the group of the Ascomycetes, 

 with particular notice of the allies of Peziza, and will show in par- 

 allel columns their arrangement in groups by some of the mod- 

 ern authors. I select this group for several reasons, among others 

 the fact that it has been recently treated by several specialists in 

 fungi, although most or all of them are naturally more or less in- 

 fluenced by the extensive researches of Brefeld. It is also a group 

 that contains very diverse elements and permits of numberless 

 combinations based on real or supposed relationships. (See table 



next page.) 



Of the above statements of a system, that of Von Tafel, con- 

 servatively cautious and indefinite, is entirely silent on the group 

 names ; coordinate groups only are recognized and these may 

 probably be taken as the conception of these relations held by 

 Brefeld himself. 



Rehm consistently uses the term " Familie " as subordinate to 

 " Ordnung," but complicates his system by the introduction of 

 two additional groups between order and family, " Hauptordnung" 

 and •' Unterordnung." His family names lack uniformity as seen 

 in the examples Exoasci, Dothidiaceae, Ascobolcae. In fact the 

 termination -aceae is used by him for groups of at least four dif- 

 ferent ranks, as: Hysteriaceae (Ordnung) Pezizaceae (Hauptord- 

 nung), Sphaeriaceae (Unterordnung), and Hypocreaceae (Familie). 



Although Schroeter does not so characterize each group distinc- 

 tively as "order" or " family ; " their rank is clearly impHed in the 

 context and the termination -aceae is consistently used for the 

 family. His ordinal groups, though mostly natural ones, lack uni- 

 formity and are often compHcated in pronunciation, ^.^., Phacidii- 

 neae, Pyrenomycetineae, Hysteriineae. 



