188 NOVA SCOTIAN FUNGI.—SOMMERS. 
aspect, and my present task is done. I have endeavored to des- 
eribe to you the bones of the salmon (Sulmo-Salar) as they 
appear to me to be. I have no theory to advance or support, and 
it is too much to expect that in what I have read to you there is 
no error, but it may serve to help some enquirer on his way, and 
if such be the result my time will not have been spent in vain. 
(For Figures see Appendia.) 
Art. VIII.—Nova Scotian Funer. By J. Sommers, M. D. 
(Read Jan. 26, 80.) 
THE present paper affords a very short list of some of the more 
common species of our mycological flora, the result of a three 
months’ study of a local botanical region. 
During the time very many specimens have passed through 
our hands. Difficulties in diagnosis, want of sufficient time, and 
the evanescent characters of many of them, have been important 
factors in determining the length of our list, but we have observed 
enough to convinee us that the fungi are capable of affording a 
field for study which will take many years of patient and labori- 
ous investigation to render complete. 
Viewed either from scientific or economic point, the fungi 
furnish us with interesting matter for study and comparison. 
Their organization, growth and reproduction afford matter for 
originality in their treatment by scientists. Their medical and 
nutritive properties—their parasitical and destructive tendencies 
supply matter for reflection on the part of the economist. 
To the student of nature they are of interest, as situate on the 
border line between the dead and living things of earth—-maintain- 
ing the balance of power, devourers of dead organic matter, destroy- 
ers of deeaying organisms; they supply, also, a bountiful store 
for hosts of highly vitalized, organized beings, and are not even 
disdained by man himself. 
The loeal peculiarities of our Province now existing, viz., its 
dense woods and extensive swampy barrens, furnish favorable 
conditions for the development of thisclass of vegetables, which our 
dry atmosphere weuld, under other conditions, seriously interfere 
