semiorbicularis and Naucoria pediades were the same plant or not. 

 Fries evidently called it Naucoria pediades when he found it growing, 

 which he stated "vulgatissimus," but he also maintained semiorbi- 

 cularis, distinguishing the former as convex, the latter as hemi- 

 spherical, and by the color. Cooke gave illustrations of differently 

 colored plants and transposed the colors, giving to semiorbicularis 

 the color of pediades and to the latter the (reputed) color of the 

 former. My work with the agarics in Sweden convinced me that it 

 was Naucoria pediades of Fries, and then later when I found it in 

 France I was convinced it is semiorbicularis, as was much better 

 figured than named, by Bulliard. We have a feeling that Naucoria 

 scleroticola is Naucoria semiorbicularis from a sclerotium, but we do 

 not know whether the sclerotium is an occasional occurrence, or 

 whether the plant habitually has sclerotia. If the latter, it is a strange 

 oversight for mycologists to make for a hundred years for such a com- 

 mon species. 



Father Boutlou wrote us, "all the Naucorias in my garden have 

 sclerotia." 



In a subsequent letter he advises, "since I wrote, the Naucorias 

 have dried up and disappeared, the sclerotium has emptied itself and 

 the hard skin alone is left." 



POLYSTICTUS OBSTINATUS, MAXIMUS AND 

 HIRTELLUS 



POLYSTICTUS OBSTINATUS, FROM W. SMALL, AFRICA. 

 We have gone over our specimens of this rather frequent species, 

 in connection with Mr. Small's sending. It is an Eastern species and 

 occurs in Java, Samoa, Philippines, Africa, but not in the American 

 tropics. Mr. Murrill confused it with Polystictus maximus of the 

 American tropics and his Philippine determinations under the latter 

 name should be corrected to Polystictus (or Trametes) obstinatus, 

 it being about as good a Trametes as it is a Polystictus. The context 

 is always slightly colored, very pale in some Java collections, but usu- 

 ally about buff-yellow. In one collection that we have from Dr. 

 Braun, German Africa, it is darker, about aniline yellow. When 

 young as some of Mr. Small's collections, the surface is unicolorous, 

 with a matted tomentum which partly disappears from older speci- 

 mens leaving glabrous, bay zones. Old collections such as we made in 

 Samoa, have smooth, hard, dark, indurate surface. As to the name 

 we shall continue to use the name given by Cooke in 1883, although it 

 is not possible that such a common plant could be a "new species" 

 at such a late date. A species, of which 30 collections have been 

 received by us in ten years, must have reached Europe before 1883. 

 The old fellows must have had it although what they called it we do 

 not know. Polystictus Meyenii, named by Klotzsch from Philippines 

 in 1843. is said to be the same plant, though the type at Berlin is 

 endorsed as being Polystictus occidentalis, and when we noticed it 

 we thought this was correct. Trametes cornea, as named by Patouill- 

 ard from China, is surely the same, if Roumeguere's distribution (sup- 

 posed to be cotype) is correct. 



