When printed on slips 4^x8^ inches, and about fifty of them 

 blocked together on a stiff pasteboard back, it makes a convenient 

 pad to write on and to carry in the pocket. This blank has 

 proved to be of great use not only in saving time but in unifying 

 the descriptions and making them fully comparable one with 

 another. Without some such guide and reminder one will surely 

 omit, in writing a description, some of the above points, making 

 a comparison of the descriptions very unsatisfactory. Even our 

 best and most careful mycologists when writing descriptions for 

 publication have failed in this uniformity as any one will testify 

 who has attempted to construct keys to the species of the larger 

 genera. 



If the numerous people who are now interested in collecting the 

 fleshy fungi would all adopt some such simple plan for unifying 

 and preserving the results of their observations on these interesting 

 plants there is no reason why our knowledge of them might not 

 soon be as complete as it is of the flowering plants. The plan 

 of using description-blanks for field study is not particularly new. 

 Various other forms are in use by different workers. The exact 

 form used is not important. The main thing is to adopt some 

 simple plan that will enable the observer to record in each case 

 all the characters that will be of use in the determination of the 

 plant and the comparison of one species with another. Carefully 

 dried specimens and faithfully drawn descriptions of the fresh 

 plant are equally necessaiy for the proper representation of these 

 plants in the herbarium. To be fully satisfactory these should be 

 supplemented by photographs and by water-color sketches. It 

 really excites the imagination to think of a large collection of 

 these plants fully represented in each of these ways. For some 

 purposes plants preserved wet, either in alcohol or formalin, 

 would also be useful, but no liquid preservative has been found 

 that is fully satisfactory and such a collection without notes would 

 be no more useful than the dried plants alone. 

 New York Botanical Garden, January 1, 1902. 



