THE BRITISH RUST FUNGI 53 



der Schweiz and McAlpine's Busts of Australia have also been 

 found extremely useful " — the former, we should say, particu- 

 larly so. 



Following the example of recent works line drawings of certain 

 spore forms, usually the teleutospore, are given in most cases. A 

 list of synonyms is given, but there is no attempt at completeness 

 and very few dates are added. It would have been a great 

 advantage to students to have dates in all cases. To confirm 

 dates is a very heavy task, but when an author has really looked 

 up all the references, it gives but little trouble to add the date, and 

 in doing so he greatly helps those who have not access to a large 

 botanical library. Very useful notes are appended to the descrip- 

 tions, giving accounts of recent studies. It is in the gathering 

 together of these scattered facts that the book will prove most 

 useful. Annual critical rSsumes of such work appear in certain 

 journals, but its relation to systematic mycology is often overlooked. 

 The host plant, relative frequency, date, locality and universal 

 distribution are usually all given. Where spore forms have not 

 been observed in this country they are described within square 

 brackets (except in the case of the interesting genus Miles ina). 

 It would seem, however, that we may be accepting very many 

 statements from observers in different countries with insufficient 

 reservation since "as is now known, the life-histories of such 

 heteroecious forms require to be worked out for each country 

 separately." For instance, it seems unsafe to join up the 

 aecidiospores and teleutospores of Gronartium Quercinum described 

 from American specimens when only the uredospores have been 

 found in this country, and " their dimensions are smaller " than in 

 America. 



The author does not go as far as many with regard to the 

 much named " biological species " and quotes with gusto the 

 rather notorious case where Probst showed that one such species 

 was confined to a form of a variety of a subspecies. It would 

 seem that all the recently proposed genera of the old world have 

 been adopted. There is still some uncertainty as to some of 

 these genera. For example, for the old Ghrysomyxa albida a new 

 genus KUhneola was proposed by Magnus. Into this genus 

 Arthur put Phragmidium Tormentillce. and in this is followed by 

 Mr. Grove. This same species, however, was placed by Magnus 

 himself in the genus Xenodochus and this is accepted by Klebahn. 

 A way out of the difficulty on the present lines would seem to be 

 to make a third monotypic genus. A totally different proposition 

 meets one in the case of the genus Puccinia, where in the present 

 work 137 species are described. As no scientific arrangement of 

 these has yet been proposed, Sydow's method of classifying them 

 according to the host plant is adopted. Certain conceptions of 

 the author as to what must be regarded as species seem rather 

 open to criticism. The suggestion that Triphragmium FiUpendidce 

 should be lumped with T. Ulmaria is one that will not be followed 

 without the proof of inoculation experiments. The nomenclature 

 is according to the International Rules (Brussels Congress, 1910) 



