SYNONYMS, MISTAKES, SPECIES IMPERFECTLY KNOWN 

 OR NOT KNOWN AT ALL, ETC. 



"The shape, size and color of one and the same species of fungus 

 are subject to considerable variation, a fact which has misled many 

 mycologists and caused them to describe already known species as 

 new. Accordingly, many superfluous names of fungi must be elim- 

 inated after establishing their identity. Hence our science, suffer- 

 ing surfeit with bad species introduced by error, ignorance or vanity, 

 requires thorough purification." 



"Faith in Science is liable to be shaken when it becomes evident 

 how many species already known in scientific works have been de- 

 scribed under new names as new species and how many wrongly 

 determined are contained in exsiccatae and museums." 



"If nature had spent its millions of years in experimenting, it 

 probably could not have produced as many different species of fungi 

 as have been scribbled together by mankind in one century. In the 

 22 volumes of Saccardo's Sylloge Fungorum, 73,516 species are 

 named; certainly 1,500 have been named since and thus about 75 

 thousand species have been published. It is probable that upon 

 thorough revision, many can be eliminated, although it can not be 

 denied that there are also some new good species, not heretofore de- 

 scribed." Hollos. 



Of the 75 thousand alleged species that exist I doubt if any indi- 

 vidual knows or has known two thousand that are good, and yet 

 there have been several who do not hesitate to discover "new species" 

 from Abrothallus to Zythia. It is the easiest way to pose. When 

 Saccardo covered the field in 1889, 31,927 alleged species were named. 

 In the twenty-five years that has since elapsed, 43,000 additional 

 have been proposed, 42,999 known only to the author, and the mill 

 grinds merrily on. 



If the so-called "scientific world" had exerted its utmost in- 

 genuity it could not have evolved a more indefinite, inaccurate or 

 impractical method of naming its objects than has been practiced in 

 mycology. The species of the world are largely the same, there are 

 relatively few of them and they are widely distributed. Mycenastrum 

 Corium, Calvatia lilacina, Polyporus gilvus and many other common 

 species grow in probably every country, and practically every spec- 

 imen of either of these that has drifted into Europe in the past has 

 been given a new name. There is no way of finding out what they 

 are except to hunt them up where they are preserved, for the de- 

 scription in not one case in a hundred is of any practical use in de- 

 termining the species. Most of the names that obscure the subject 

 are either based on the scanty knowledge of the "old species" of the 

 party naming them, or on imperfect material that never should have 

 been named. On the following pages we give our opinion of a number 

 of "species" we have seen in the various museums. 



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