NOTE 146. More about Professor McGinty. "In looking over your Notes and Let- 

 ters I was much interested in Professor McGinty's determinations. I had made up my 

 mind that he was the own brother of Sairey Gamp's friend, Mrs. Harris, but not until 

 . I had read your Letter No. 38 did I realize that there was any relationship by marriage 

 between Mrs. Harris and the immortal Sairey." 



Professor McGinty's relationship does not end with Dickens' characters. He is a full 

 brother and an honored member of that brotherhood of deluded individuals who think 

 that "modern science" consists in digging up old corpses of discarded synonyms and 

 attempting to inject life into them. 



NOTE 147. Polyporus galactinus. Although this species was originally named from 

 Cincinnati, I have been fifteen years puzzling over its identity, and only lately have be- 

 come thoroughly satisfied on the subject. Morgan had it right in his flora. It is a 

 common species in our woods, late in the season, on rotten logs. 'When fresh the surface 

 is fibrillose, rugulose, pubescent, with projecting hyphae. The color is sordid white, 

 and when fresh it is zoned within. The spores are subglobose, 31.0 x 4 hyaline, smooth, 

 with a unilateral gutta. It dries rather firm and hard. I do not know the plant as a 

 European species. 



The plant is quite close to Polyporus spumeus of Europe and America, but the latter 

 plant has larger spores, the flesh is white and not zonate, and it differs entirely in its 

 habits. Polyporus spumeus is not a saprophyte on dead wood, but a heart rot, and the fruit 

 is developed frcm knot holes or decayed portions of living tree?. Polyporus spumeus 

 is one of the few fungi that affect the apple trees. Murrill, as far as I can make out', 

 does not include Polyporus galactinus at all in his work. What he calls Polyporus galactinus 

 is Polyporus spumeus. 



NOTE 148. Polyporus lacteus. We finally accept Polyporus laeteus as the name for 

 a common white species that has puzzled us for years. We accept it in the .sense of 

 Bresadola, but we can not reconcile it with Fries' description. The pores are small, round, 

 and regular. Fries described the pores as "elongated flexuous, becoming labyrinthiform," 

 and so shows them in his icones. Such a discrepancy would be a bar to taking the name, 

 were it not for the fact that it is a common plant, and we have no other name for 

 it, and do net propose to call it a "new species." And if it is not Polyporus lacteus, 

 not only is this common plant unplaced in Fries, but Polyporus lacteus is unplaced as 

 far as I know. 



In this sense Polyporus lacteus is a frequent plant, pure white when fresh. Context 

 white, without zones, drying soft and friable. Pores small, round. Spores allantoid, 

 l-l J -x5-6. Surface fibrillose, rarely almost pubescent, varying to almost smooth. 



Polyporus lacteus is virtually same plant as Polyporus a'.bellus, and runs into it in 

 every intermediate gradation. Theoretically (and often in reality) Polyporus albellus has 

 a grayish, smooth surface, not fibrillose, but in other characters, flesh, pores, and spores 

 is exactly the same, and the surface difference is probably (and apparently) not a definite 

 character. In practice it is very difficult to definitely refer many collections that are in- 

 termediate between these two species. 



Polyporus albellus has been confused by Karsten, Murrill, and, I think, by Fries in 

 his latest work, with Polyporus chioneus of Bresadola, and that of Fries in his early 

 days, which was surely' a different plant. 



NOTE 149. The evolution in the history of fungus Polyporus rheades. Our knowl- 

 edge of the history of fungi is being gradually evolved. We learn a little here and a 

 little there, and hardly a week passes but something is added to the general stock. 

 Polyporus rheades is one of Persoon's species, and good types are in the museum at 

 Leiden (cfr. Myc. Notes, p. 467). Fries called it Polyporus vulpinus, and under this 

 name I first learned it from Mr. Romell. It grows on poplar, and is usually thin and 

 extended in its manner of growth. While we have known it for a number of years, 

 we never suspected that it was the same as the next plant. During one season, while 

 I was collecting at Femsjo, where Fries made most of his collections, I found with Mr. 

 Romell a large, soft, ungulate species on oak. I knew that Fries must have met the 

 plant and had a name for it, and I soon convinced myself that it was the lost species 

 of Europe that Fries called Polyporus corruscans. Mr. Romell had not figured that out, 

 but he knew the plant that Fries called Femes fulvus, and which Eresadola has renamed 

 Polyporus Friesii, which, from what Mr. Romell told me, I was convinced was only a 

 later stage, more hardened and indurate, but the same plant that we have found at 

 Upsala (cfr. Letter 44, Note 47). I think Mr. Romell partially agreed to it. The next 

 development was when I found that a plant that Berkeley had named from the United 

 States as Polyporus dryophilus is exactly the same plant as our Swedish plant. I sent 

 specimens to Bresadola, and he confirmed my decision. 



Recently I was favored with a visit from Mr. Long, Forest Pathologist of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. I am always glad to see Mr. Long, for he 

 has made extensive observations in the field, and I learn much from exchanging notes 

 with him. He knew Polyporus vulpinus from Romell, as he finds it on poplar, and also 

 Polyporus dryophilus (as he calls it, on oak), and he had decided that they were the same 

 species, modified only by the host. On closely comparing them I reach the same con- 

 clusion. I wonder if the final chapter is now written as to this species. As to the name 

 to use when a plant has so many names, every fellow will have his own idea. I shall call 

 the large form on oak Polyporus corruscans ; the small, often imbricate form, on poplar, 

 Polpyorus rheades. 



This species (Polyporus rheades and Polyporus corruscans) is characterized by first 

 developing a kind of mycelial cushion or core on which the tissue of the pileus is de- 



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