30 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [yoy 
General considerations 
The bearing of these facts upon mycological taxonomy is apparent. 
If a fungus can be easily changed as regards its essential descriptive 
characters by a change in substratum, density of infection, or other 
environmental factor, these characters are worthless for descriptive 
purposes, unless the conditions under which they develop be accurately 
known. 
There. are two fundamental benefits from description: (1) to 
enable recognition of a particular form; (2) to aid in classification. 
The first of these is a necessary preliminary to the second, and it is 
with mere recognition that we have in many instances yet to deal in — 
mycology, particularly among the group Fungi imperfecti, with its — 
enormous genera, such as Septoria, Phyllosticta, and Cercospora, — 
with their thousands of so-called species. While life-history work and 
infection experiments will do much, accurate recognition of the form 
in hand is a necessary preliminary even to this. 
To reach any satisfactory basis, many fungi must be studied in — 
culture, under suitable standard conditions, much after the fashion 
that bacteria are now studied. 
NortH Carorina Acric. Exper. STATION AND COLLEGE 
WEsT RALEIGH 
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