In addition there has been no lack of men who have amused 

 themselves by inventing new names for the sections of polypores. 

 In the start we have Karsten who was the first to engage in such work. 

 He discovered that most of Fries' sections were "new genera" and gave 

 them names. The work had so little merit and had evidently so 

 little originality as a whole that although proposed thirty years ago, 

 no one except the author has followed it since, and it figures, when it 

 has figured at all, chiefly in synonymy. 



Monsieur Quelet, a leading French mycologist, learned the greater 

 part of what he knew from Fries and his works, and in his first 

 publication could not find words to express his appreciation of the 

 "grand mycologue d'Upsala." After he had gotten a little insight 

 into the subject he passed the latter part of his life juggling the names 

 of his great master, and he did it so thoroughly that very few of his 

 colleagues, even in France, have ever been disposed to use his work. 

 This is unfortunate, for Quelet was a field mycologist and knew well 

 the species that occur in France. As far as I have been able to decide 

 there was no system or logic to his juggling, his only object apparently 

 being to propose names in place of Fries' names. 



Schroeter would divide the Polyporus species into three genera 

 on the color of the spores and context, which while answering very 

 well for the few species that he knew, if generally applied would 

 bring the bulk of them, about a thousand, into one genus. 



The last man to engage in this line of name changing is Mr. 

 Murrill, who has no more trouble discovering "new genera" and con- 

 cocting new names than if there had not been three men doing 

 exactly the same thing with the same plants before him. I question if 

 there is an institution or mycologist in Europe that attaches any im- 

 portance or pays any attention to this kind of work, and very few in 

 America. In my opinion such work is of little value or avail. 



The principal work that these men do is to get up new "generic" 

 names on various pretexts, and of course one can make a "genus" 

 out of every species if he wants to. Their chief work, however, is to 

 take the old sections of Fries' genera and then juggle up excuses to 

 give them new names usually under the cover of some "rule." Such 

 work, in my opinion, has so little to commend it that I do not consider 

 it worth citing in detail even as synonyms. 



When Fries proposed the divisions of the subject he knew but very 

 few species, but in the years that have followed "new species" have 

 been published in quantities, chiefly by Berkeley, who proposed so 

 many of them that no one has been able to do much with them since. 

 He was not, however, the only one to name foreign species, although 

 he named a large part of them. Twenty-five per cent of the species 

 considered good in this pamphlet were named by Berkeley. 



In the early days Klotzsch and Junghuhn named quite a number. 

 Then came Fries, Montagne, and Berkeley. Then Leveille and Cooke, 

 and Kalchbrenner. In the latter years we have Hennings, Patouillard, 

 and Murrill. It would be more accurate to state that they named 

 collections, for I do not think that any of them knew much about 



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