CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CRYPTOGAM IC LABORATORIES 

 OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. — No. LXVIII. 



PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSES OF NEW SPECIES OF 



CHAETOMIUM. 



By A. H. Chivers. 

 Presented by R. Thaxter. Received, Juae 16, 1912. 



For a considerable time the writer has been engaged in the prepara- 

 tion of an ilkistrated monograph of the genus Chaetomium but owing 

 to unavoidable interruptions, and delay caused l)y the preparation 

 of plates, he has thus far been obliged to defer a final publication. 



At the time when this work was begun, the only comprehensive 

 paper on the subject was the well known monograph of Zopf (Nova 

 Acta Acad. Leop. -Carol. 42. ISSl), l^ut after it was well under way a 

 paper by Bainier appeared in the Bull, de la Soc. Myc. de France 

 (Vol. XXV. Ease. 4. p. 191. 1910) in which a considerable number 

 of new forms were described and illustrated, some of which prove 

 to be American. Up to the present time, however, there has been no 

 further attempt to make a comprehensive review of the genus or to 

 collate the American forms with the exception of the revision of the 

 Chaetomiaceae in volume III of the "Flora of North America" by 

 H. L. Palliser, who enumerates seventeen species including three 

 unpublished names. 



In the course of his work upon these widely distributed fungi the 

 writer has been al)le to examine a very large series of specimens from 

 various herbaria and exsiccati, and to cultivate many species from 

 diverse sources on various media and through many successive genera- 

 tions. As a result of this examination numerous forms have been 

 added to those previously recorded from America, and a number of 

 new species have been recognized of which it seems desirable to 

 publish the following preliminary diagnoses. In this connection it 

 may be mentioned that all of these forms with two exceptions have 

 been extensively cultivated in a pure condition and that it has been 

 possible to determine with accuracy their range of variation as well 

 as their salient, specific characteristics. 



