150 Shear : Treatment of monotypic genera of fungi 



upon a single species^ S. conica Lev, n. sp,, the specimens being 

 apparently old, the spores were thought to be free. Later, it was 

 found that the type was an ascogenous form and the species was 

 placed by Cesati and De Notaris in their new genus Amphisphaeria^ 

 Schem. Sfen Ital. 49. 1863, becoming A. conica (Lev.) Ces. & 

 DeNot,, which name has been adopted by Saccardo, Syll. Fung. 

 I : 719, while the name Sphaeropsis is applied to a great group 

 of species of Fungi Imperfecti and the genus "emended." 



It is perhaps unnecessary to cite further instances of this kind 

 to illustrate the present practice of most mycologists. Saccardo 

 has been referred to in connection with most of these cases, not 

 because he furnishes the most notorious examples of this practice, 

 but because his Sylloge Fungorum is a general work widely used 

 and largely followed by mycologists at present. In many cases 

 he simply followed the example of some preferred predecessor. 

 Cases of the same sort can be found in Engler and Prantl's Pflanzen- 

 familien, Rabenhorst's Kryptogamen-flora and almost any general 

 work on systematic mycology. 



The present condition of mycological nomenclature, as indi- 

 cated by the cases cited, has been brought about apparently in 

 great part by several rather natural causes. One of the most im- 

 portant of these has been the want of accurate knowledge on the 

 part of the earlier writers of the organisms with which they were 

 dealing. With the poor microscopes available and the lack of 

 time or inclination to use them, there is little wonder that im- 

 portant and essential microscopic characters of the smaller fungi 

 were not recognized. Generic characters and descriptions were 

 therefore generally based upon superficial examinations of speci- 

 mens with the naked eye or a hasty and insufficient study with a 

 magnifier or microscope. As a consequence, the descriptions 

 given were usually very imperfect or erroneous. As the older 

 mycologists seem to have tried to interpret genera by descrip- 

 tions or concepts instead of appealing directly to the actual organ- 

 ism which the original author used, this may account in part, 

 perhaps, for the neglect of types. All subsequent writers, as well 

 as the author of a genus, appear to have felt perfectly free to take 

 one or all the species from a genus at any time or to modify or 

 amend its description according to their conception of it. This 



