THE VARIATION OF THE CORTEX AND SPECIES. 



There is one factor that is net taken into account by those who see a new 

 species in every slight difference. That is the factor of variation of the same 

 plant. I could well present the above photographs and claim that I have two 

 species very different in their cortex nature. And. yet both these specimens 

 grew from the same mycelium. They are about the same age, and are brothers 

 in fact. The species is Lycoperdon umbrinum which Persoon well illustrated, 

 showing it with a very minute cortex as our plant on the right. Had some 

 one shown Persoon the plant on the left, it would for him have been another 

 species. But not only does the cortex of Lycoperdons vary in different indi- 

 viduals of the same species, but it changes on the same individual with age. 

 For instance, who would regard our enlargements (Fig. 251) as representing 

 the same cortex? And yet they represent the same plant, the same cortex 

 at different ages. 



Fig. 250. 

 Lycoperdon umbriiiutn, showing variation of cortex. 



The study of mycology is net a matter of exact measurement. It 

 is rather a study of variation, a study of change. All things that live 

 change. Nature, instead of casting her species in molds, each specimen like 

 the other, seems to delight in producing an infinite variety. The learned pro- 

 fessor gets a specimen with a little different spores, or cortex, or color, or 

 form, and looks wise and says that it is a new species. "I will name and 

 describe it and add my name to it, and be handed down to posterity as a 

 wonderful discoverer." About three times out of four he will be sorry for 

 it if he lives long enough to learn better. Luckily for the learned professor, 

 when it^is found out it is printed in small type and put in synonymy, and the 

 matter is smoothed over. But in plain English "synonymy" (in the opinion 

 of the writers) is simply a record of some one's blunders, and there is no 

 subject on earth where there is more synonymy than in mycology. 



Nor is there any finality to it. No one knows what a species is, and each 

 man's species are only individual opinions. If he knows but few plants his 



