104 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
o 
At the time when my attention was first attracted to the Laboulbeniacece by the 
' discovery of several new species in the vicinity of New Haven, Connecticut, during 
the summer of 1890, it included six described genera (two of which have proved to be 
synonyms), represented by fifteen described species of which one only was from North 
America ; wliile, of the remaining forms, two were from South America and the rest 
from Europe. To these, however, European writers have since added a single species, 
while my own observations have served very considerably to increase the total num- 
ber of forms referable to this ftimily, A ^eater portion of these additions have already 
been described in a series of papers which have appeared from time to time durh 
the past few years in the " Proceedings " of the Academy, and serve as a systematic Uasis 
for the present monograph, in which will be found enumerated more than one hun- 
dred and fifty species from various parts of the world, distributed among twenty-eight 
genera. The labor and time involved in obtaining and studying the several thousand 
specimens which have been examined in the preparation of this paper and of the 
accompanying plates, can hardly be appreciated by any one who has not had personal 
experience of the many difficulties associated with the manipulation and study of 
these, for the most part, very minute plants. It is, therefore, needless to say that my 
investigations, carried on as they have been in connection with other occupations, are 
incomplete and unsatisfactory in many points relating to the structure and develop- 
of certain tr 
inera, for the proper study of which sufficient time or mat 
both, have not been available ; and althoutrh a certain amount has been done 
th 
O 
hich take place in the sexual organs before and 
conclusions concerning them 
after fertilization, I have been unable, as yet, to reach 
sufficiently definite to warrant their publication. The results obtained, however, 
although in very many respects imperfect, have served to demonstrate the unlooked- 
for numerical importance of the group, its great diversity, and, above all, have afforded 
definite information concerning the course of development of its members, as a result 
of which their pivotal position among the higher fungi is clearly indicated. 
Of the species enumerated, more than half have been collected in New England by 
myself and studied while still living, the remainder having been derived from the 
exammation of dead insects in the collections to which I have had access, or from 
msects sent in alcohol by numerous correspondents to whose kindness I owe very 
many mteresting forms. For such favors I am under special obligations to Miss A. M. 
Parker, who has sent me many speciuiens of Carabid^ from Washington ; to Prof. 
OF. Cook, who has placed at my disposal all the Coleoptera collected by him in 
Liberia ; to Mr. Theodore Pergande for many interesting specimens collected in or 
V 
