VIII 



bury their dead. The business of reviving corpses has been carried 

 altogether too far in mycology. American mycologists, it must be 

 confessed, are peculiarly gullible as far as accepting as authentic 

 much that is offered to them in the way of treatises on the genera 

 and species of earlier mycologists. An examination of some of them, 

 at least, shows that they are as inaccurate as they are useless. No 

 one who uses the Index can complain justly that we have not pro- 

 vided him with names enough, good, bad and indifferent, and those 

 who examine it with care will probably be surprised at the large 

 number of names which have been encumbering the literature of 

 our fungi as nomina nuda or as names of species about which we 

 are and probably always shall be ignorant. At the Vienna Congress 

 it was voted to accept a list of certain genera of Spermaphytes whose 

 names are to be retained regardless of strict priority. It is to be 

 hoped that at the next congress a similar list of cryptogams will be 

 presented so that in the case of genera clearly defined and generally 

 recognized under names in use for many years, they may be re- 

 garded as fixed and exempt from future changes on the ground of 

 priority. 



Although the undersigned must be held responsible for the plan 

 and general character of the Index, and must be held answerable 

 for the defects which those making a practical use of it will un- 

 doubtedly detect, it is not to be supposed that a work involving so 

 large an amount of labor could have been accomplished without the 

 collaboration of several persons, and the writer wishes in this place 

 to state in detail the manner in which the work has been conducted, 

 and to give proper credit to those who have taken part in it. For 

 a few years beginning in 1874, the indexing was done by the writer 

 himself, but since 1883 his occupations have made it necessary to 

 intrust the main part of the indexing itself to others, while he has 

 had to limit himself to a general supervision of the work, to the 

 examination of authentic specimens involved in settling the nomen- 

 clature, and to a search through contemporary foreign literature and 

 scattered papers published in the earlier days of mycology bearing 

 directly or indirectly on North American species. Since 1 883 the 

 indexing has been done by Mr. A. B. Seymour, with necessary cleri- 

 cal assistance, with the exception of the year 1885-86, when, during 

 Mr. Seymour's absence, Prof. L. H. Pammel was in charge. By far 

 the greater part of the work of indexing, it will be seen, has been 



