106 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
him on “Facts and observations touching the flora of the state of New 
York” (pp. 403-410, 1867). This indicates that he was in touch with 
the scientific work of the Museum (then the State Cabinet of Natural 
History) before his appointment to the staff, and evidently enjoyed a 
close acquaintance with one of the Regents, himself a botanist, G. W. 
Cuinton, of Buffalo. He was appointed Botanist of the Museum in 
1867. In 1883 the legislature created the position of State Botanist, 
to which Dr. PECK was appointed and which he held until his retirement 
in IgI5. 
He was most celebrated for his taxonomic studies and publications 
on the fungi, although seed plants, ferns, and mosses received consider- 
able attention in nearly all of his reports, and quite a number of new 
species of seed plants were described by him. His activities in this 
field were not confined to New York State. He had many correspond- 
ents from all parts of the United States and Canada. His reports as 
State Botanist began with the 21st Museum Report for 1867 (published 
in 1868), and the last one by him was the Museum Report for 1912 
(Bulletin 167, 1913). These reports have carried the name and work 
of Dr. PEcK to all parts of the scientific world. With few exceptions the 
new species of fungi described in these reports included only those from 
New York State. Some of the early ones were published in the Bulletin 
of the Buffalo Society of Natural History and in the Transactions of the 
Albany Institute of Arts and Sciences. New species from territory outside 
of the state were mostly published in his numerous contributions to the 
BotanicaL GAZETTE and to the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 
dating from the very early history of these journals. His work covered 
all the groups of the fungi, and the new species described by him number 
between 2000 and 3000. A list of those published up to 1908 is given 
in the Museum Bulletin no. 131, pp. 59-190, 1909. These reports 
of the State Botanist have been in great demand by students of fungi, 
especially because there had been no manual of the fungi of North 
America. 
The monographs of certain genera of the agarics form a very valuable 
feature of his work, particularly those appearing in a number of his 
later reports. His monograph of the Boleti of the United States (N.Y. 
State Mus. Bull. no. 8, 1889) should also be mentioned. He gave con- 
siderable attention to testing the edible properties of the fleshy fungi, 
as several of his reports testify. It is unfortunate that he was not 
able to complete monographs of all the genera of the agarics. During the 
