IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 103 



collecting them, in a fashion describing them, naming and 

 occasionally figuring them. In 1873-75 Rostafinski, under direc- 

 tion of De Bary, undertook the first systematic presentation 

 of the group as a whole, properly separating the slime moulds 

 from the fungi, basing subsequent classification upon char- 

 acters unused before, characters chiefly microscopic, and for 

 the first time in the case of the great majority of the forms , 

 studied, offered specific descriptions sufficiently exact, and pre- 

 sented intelligible figures. I have said that Rostafinski based 

 his specific descriptions upon characters revealed by a micro- 

 scope: not only so but it must be considered that his work was 

 effected by the aid of a good microscope, one which enabled him 

 to go into details of spore measurement, spore sculpture and 

 so on, to an extent to his predecessors undreamed, to most of 

 them indeed impossible. lathe preparation of his classic, he had 

 access to all the literature of his subject and generally employs 

 for genera and species names already in use. Furthermore he 

 gives for all such species a synonomy which must strike every 

 student as liberal in the extreme. For instance, in the case of 

 Fuligo varians Sommf. , the synonyms quoted number 42. But 

 when it comes to selecting the particular name which he 

 has adopted, Rostafinski was often somewhat arbitrary. Not 

 only does he discard often the specific name which by his list 

 of synonyms has conceded priority, much less does he follow 

 the rule which adopts "the name given first with the genus in 

 which the species now stands," but he seemed often to discard 

 any and all names, and to name his species without regard to 

 any rule, but purely in accord with his own taste or preference. 

 For twenty years Rostafinski's work has been unassailed, 

 partly because of its inherent exellence and the great name of 

 his master De Bary, which seemed to stand as a guarantee 

 behind it, and partly no doubt because of the unintelligible 

 Polish dialect in which the book was given to the world. The 

 Germans let the thing alone as ojms perfectum, the English bot- 

 anists were content with Cooke's paraphrase and there the 

 matter stood. Massee, in his Monograph of 1892, followed 

 almost implicitly the Rostafinskian nomenclature, and even 

 quoted his synonyms intoto. Meantime some continental 

 writers, as Rannkier in Denmark, were becoming reckless, and 

 Mr. Lister the latest English monographer, was preparing to 

 overturn the whole Rostafinskian list. Tnis author is not only 

 extremely radical in his omission and consolidation of pre- 



