what the others had done, and it has been very much of a haphazard 

 proceeding from the beginning. 



Junghuhn and Montagne, I think, did the best work, or rather 

 the specimens they left are the best. Fries' foreign specimens have 

 largely disappeared and many of them will never be known. Kalch- 

 brenner did the worst work of anybody and renamed as "new species" 

 the commonest, old, well-known things. He did not seem to have had 

 the most elementary idea of the subject. Leveille's work was in the 

 main very poor, and Murrill's recent work is almost as bad. Berkeley, 

 Hennings, and Patouillard have named as new a large part of the 

 collections that come into their hands. Naturally they got a number 

 that are good, and many that I think are not. Spegazzini grinds the 

 "new species" out by the wholesale from South America, but very- 

 few of his specimens reach Europe, and such as have are largely mis- 

 named. I think no one knows what he is doing, not even he. 



Very little can be told from any "description" that can be drawn 

 from a Polyporus, and the most of the determinations that are made 

 from "descriptions" are wrong. The only way to get names for the 

 plants is to hunt them up in the various museums where they are 

 preserved, and then it is often not satisfactory. One finds the same 

 thing named over and over again. Names based on little frustules that 

 never did give the slightest idea of any character and many other 

 irregular things that would not be tolerated except in "Science." I 

 believe Bresadola to be the only man in Europe who has made an 

 earnest effort to hunt up and learn the characters of the "old species" 

 of Polyporus in the various museums of Europe to-day. I do not 

 always agree with him in all the details, but I think no two who 

 endeavor to learn names for fungi from the fragmentary, indefinite, 

 and conflicting specimens on which the names have been based will 

 ever agree in all cases. 



Cooke tried to arrange the names according to the Friesian sys- 

 tem, but owing to the number of species and the hurried manner 

 in which the work was done, it was very inaccurate and in its details 

 was most erroneously done. This was not all Cooke's fault. Many 

 of the "new species" are described in such a way that not only can 

 nothing be told about their identity, but in many cases from the de- 

 scription one can not even place them in the section where they belong. 

 In this pamphlet, when species stated to be unknown (to me) are 

 placed in sections, I do not claim that such disposition is anything 

 more than a guess. 



Having nothing else to follow, Saccardo adopted Cooke's arrange- 

 ment, which is quite unfortunate, as Saccardo is used as a basis of 

 classification in most museums, and by this method species are brought 

 into the same division that have little j "semblance and often no relation. 



In this pamphlet the stipitate species are divided into eleven 

 sections, or genera if one so desires to call them, but we prefer to^call 

 them sections. We disclaim having discovered any "new genera" or 

 anything else new in the classification. Nine of our divisions we have 

 taken from the work of Fries and two from that of Patouillard. 



97 



