NOTES ON CHILEAN FUNGI. I 
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CRYPTOGAMIC LABORATORY OF HAR- 
VARD UNIVERSITY, LXVI 
ROLAND THAXTER 
(WITH PLATES XVIII AND XIX AND ONE FIGURE) 
During the months of February and March 1906, it was my 
good fortune to pass six weeks of the antarctic summer and early 
autumn in the town of Punta Arenas, on the Straits of Magellan. 
These months being in many respects the most favorable for 
botanizing in this cold and wind-swept region, I had an excellent 
opportunity to become acquainted with its fungus flora, which was 
much richer and more varied than might have been expected, in 
view of the comparatively scanty phanerogamic flora and the 
general severity of the climate. Although for about a week in 
late February the mercury rose above 60.F. every day, and 
once even reached 70°, the mean diurnal temperature during the 
remainder of my stay was below 60°. Freezing temperatures were 
not uncommon, and it was not unusual in the morning to see the 
green beech forest on the hills to the west of the town loaded with 
snow. The small pools, in the localities where I collected, were 
often frozen over as late as the middle of the forenoon, while 
icicles might be seen hanging from flowers and grass growing on the 
dripping south slopes of the ravine which led to my usual collecting 
ground. 
The town of Punta Arenas is not favorably situated as a base 
from which to make botanical excursions, since the whole shore of 
the Strait, as far as one can see to the south and for many miles 
to the north, has been devastated by fire; and the general aspect 
presented to the newcomer, as his steamer drops anchor in the 
open roadstead opposite the town, is to the last degree unattractive 
and forbidding. Formerly a superb forest of the antarctic beech 
(Nothofagus) covered the whole region, extending from the water’s 
edge over a somewhat undulating plain, which gradually rises 
to the base of a range of hills or low mountains, the highest not 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 50] [430 
