species are clear to him and he has no trouble or hesitation in discovering new 

 species. The more specimens he studies, however, the more vague become 

 his species until at last he is apt to reach the conclusion that there is no such 

 thing as species. The whole series becomes one confluent, connected mass. 

 We can illustrate that best by a relief map. We put our finger here and 



Fig. 251 XG . 

 Cortex of lycoperdon pratense at different ages. 



say this is a mountain, and here there are foot-hills and here a plain. But 

 you can not say where the mountain ends and the foot-hills begin. So it is 

 with species. We pick out certain- prominent characters and say these are the 

 characters of this species, and other characters of that species, but if they 

 are "related" and we have enough collections and material, we will find that 

 our two species run into each other and we can not draw a line between them. 

 The fewer specimens a man sees the clearer his species are to him. 



DUPLICATE NAMES. 



The great bugaboo that is always offered as an excuse why authors should 

 write their names after plant names is "What are you going to do when 

 different authors call different plants the same name unless you designate the 

 author?" These cases are relatively rare. 



I have just worked over the names of the phalloids. There are about 

 a hundred phalloids known (or more or less known) and they have about 

 three hundred names. In this lot there are only two instances where the same 

 name is applied to different plants, viz : Mutinus elegans of Java, in the sense 

 of Fischer, is not the same as Mutinus elegans of the United States. Nor is 

 this instance very serious, for Mutinus elegans of Java is much better called 

 Jansia elegans. Phallus roseus of Egypt is not the same as Phallus roseus 

 of Java. Xor is this instance very serious, for neither species has any value. 

 On the other hand, there is one case where twenty-four different names refer 

 to the same plant, each one of the twenty-four bearing the advertisement 

 of the learned author who proposed it. The advertising system of mycology 

 is very much a case of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. 



WANTED -A GOOD COLOR BOOK. 



If there is one thing more than another that is needed in mycology it is 

 a good color book, with good, permanent, ample specimens of colors named. 

 When Monsieur Klincksieck told me that he was working on a color book, 



439 



