Underwood: north American helvellales. 487 



which it matures spores, the rest of the time remaining under- 

 ground and invisible in its vegetative condition. 



It is over twenty years since a list of the members of this 

 order of plants known to grow in America has been published. 

 Schweinitz 5 in 1834, gave a list of those known to him, 

 including 24 species. No further general list was published 

 until 1875 when Cooke 6 recorded 41 species. Of these one 

 species (Mitrula inflata Fr. ) has been shown by Peck 7 to be- 

 long to a distinct group, and a second species (Psilopezia bab- 

 bingtonii) has been reduced leaving nominally 39 species belong- 

 ing to ten genera. In the present list which simply records 

 the species which have been reported, without attempting to 

 determine the accuracy of the determinations, we give 73 

 nominal species arranged in 17 genera, an increase of over 82 

 per cent, for the last two decades of exploration. In recent 

 years there have been several partial rearrangements of genera 

 and in Europe a considerable critical work on the species. 

 There is still considerable work of this kind necessary on the 

 material already reported from America and as the following 

 will show we have only begun to know anything of distribu- 

 tion. Besides the generic arrangement of Saccardo 8 after 

 which the species of the Sylloge were arranged, we have two 

 by Schroeter, one 9 of which covers the 34 species of Silesia, 

 and* the other 10 includes descriptions of all the genera. Fol- 

 lowing these we have the wholly similar arrangement of 

 Rehm 1 1 covering the 73 species of Central Europe (Germany, 

 Austria and Switzerland). Phillips' 12 earlier revision of the 

 species of the British Isles included 44 species. Of the American 

 species, 31 (about 40 per cent.) are also found in Europe, the 

 remaining species appearing to be endemic. In distribution 

 they extend all the way from Cuba to Greenland and from 

 Southern California to Behring's Strait. The following distri- 

 bution by states represents more properly the poverty of our 

 collections from various parts of the country than the actual 

 abundance in the various sections. It will also point out to 



(5) Synopsis Fungorum in America Boreali media degentium. Trans. Amer. 

 Philos. 9oo. 4:169, 170, 178, 181. 1834. 



(6) Synopsis of the Discomyeetous Fungi of the United States. Bull. Buffalo Soc. 

 Nat. Sci. 2:285-300. 1875. 



(7) Fungi in wrong genera. Bull. Torr. Bot. Olub, 9: 1-4. 1882. 



(8) Conspectus genera Dlscomycstum hucusque cognitoriun Bot. Oentralblatt. 

 18:213-230,247-256. 1884. 



(9) Soliroeter. Kryptogamen PI. von Schlesien, 8 : 16-31. 1893. 



(10) Helvellineae, In Engler-Prantl. DlenaturL Pflanzenfam. 1 : 162-172. l-*!>4. 



(11) Rehm. Pilze. 8 : 1134-1208. In Rabenhorst. Krypt. Flora. 1895. 



(12) Phillips. A. Manual of the British Dlscomyoetes. 1887. 



