LETTER No. 50. 



REVISION OF FUNGI IN THE SCHWEINITZ HERBARIUM 

 By C. G. Lloyd 



(Cincinnati, November, 1913.) 



Lewis David von Schweinitz, as his name was in full, blazed the trail 

 for fungus work in America. Nearly 100 years, ago (1818) he published 

 the first paper on the subject, Synopsis Fungorum Carolineae. He was a 

 Moravian minister, and his interest in fungi was awakened by his tutor, 

 Albertini, while Schweinitz was a student in Europe. He published, in col- 

 laboration with his tutor, a work on the fungi of Niesky, where his college 

 was located. On his return to this country he was located for six years 

 at Salem, North Carolina, and his work on the fungi of that locality was 

 recorded in the work cited. Afterwards he removed to Bethlehem, Pa., 

 his native town, and his final work, Synopsis Fungorum in America 

 Boreali, appeared in 1831 in the Transactions of the Philadelphia Philo- 

 sophical Society. A few years later (1834) he died. 



Schweinitz, in these early days, seemed to have been absolutely alone 

 in his studies in this country. His first text-book was Persoon's Synopsis, 

 which he followed in his first work; but before the second work appeared, 

 Fries had come to the front in Europe, and the second work of Schweinitz 

 v/as based on and followed the nomenclature of Fries' Systema. 



Schweinitz' herbarium is preserved in the Academy of Natural Sci- 

 ences at Philadelphia, and as it is the beginning of fungus work in this 

 country, it is the starting-point of American history of the subject. Every 

 attention is given to the student at the Academy, and my personal thanks 

 are extended to Stewardson Brown for privileges of working with the 

 herbarium during several visits I have made to Philadelphia for this 

 purpose. 



This is not the first commentary that has been written on Schweinitz's 

 specimens. There appeared in the Journal Academy Natural Sciences, 

 Philadelphia, 1856, a commentary under the joint authors' names of 

 Berkeley and Curtis. It was very correctly and carefully written, and, 

 with a few exceptions, the determinations were correctly made. It is 

 quite evident to me that while the paper was claimed to have been written 

 by Berkeley and Curtis, that Berkeley alone was the author. In the first 

 place, Curtis had a very scanty knowledge of fungus classification, and 

 was totally incompetent to write a critical commentary such as this ; and, 

 in the second place, there are references to specimens in Hooker's her- 

 barium, specimens that Berkeley alone could have seen. It is also evident 

 that Berkeley saw the specimens as contained in the original wrappers of 

 Schweinitz. Curtis did not divide the specimens and send them to Berkeley, 

 for the few little frustules that are preserved at Kew could not have been 

 the basis of this work. It is my belief that Curtis sent the herbarium to 

 Berkeley, and after Berkeley had written the article it was returned to 

 Curtis and 



AT LOS ANGELES 



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