һе АА шу Pe. e ы ы, Dept лға ag ae UNTERE 
1914) 
BURT—THELEPHORACEJE OF NORTH AMERICA. I 187 
substratum. If the description fails to give the color as exactly 
as if it had been noted by comparison with such a standard 
work as Ridgway’s ‘Color Standards’ or Saccardo’s ‘Chromo- 
taxia,’ then it is inferior to the specimen; if the description con- 
tains no information as to whether the basidia are simple or 
cruciate, making up the whole hymenium or arranged side by 
side with other organs of characteristic form, standing directly 
on the substratum or separated from it by densely or loosely 
interwoven hyphe or other form of subhymenial layer ;—if it 
does not contain all this information in exact terms and as much 
in addition as the specimen itself could afford, then it is an im- 
perfect description of the species. It may be so imperfect that 
a dozen different species of fungi could be assembled, to any 
one of which it would apply as well as to any other, as is the 
case with the supposedly common and cosmopolitan Corticium 
lacteum and C. calceum. Published exsiecati probably contain 
the full dozen under each of these names. 
In the case of resupinate Hymenomycetes, types and authentic 
specimens of the species are of the highest importance to supple- 
ment the prevailingly imperfect descriptions with full and 
exact data. Hence, the types of fungi on which the descriptions 
are based and the authentie specimens from the authors of the 
species are of importance in proportion to the degree in which 
these plants may yield data not afforded by the descriptions and 
existing illustrations of the species. In the case of the resupi- 
nate Hymenomycetes, the early descriptions are of slight prac- 
tical value except as they are backed up by types and specimens 
from their authors. For this reason, if there had been no 
other, the International Botanical Congress, at Brussels, acted 
for the best interests of mycology in fixing the beginning of the 
naming of Hymenomycetes with the publication of Fries’ ‘Sys- 
tema Mycologicum,'—the time when the preservation of types 
and authentie specimens of such fungi in herbaria became so 
prevalent that it was possible for later mycologists to distin- 
guish the resupinate species by taking the trouble to study the 
types, if authentie specimens could not be obtained. 
My method of becoming acquainted with our described 
species of T'helephoracee has been to study and arrange by 
species in my herbarium the specimens as they have accumu- 
