Report of the State Botanist 119 



order to show its different varieties. Of the figured species, 14 

 are described as new. These plates and their accompanying- manu- 

 script descriptions have been bound in one large volume with 

 manuscript dedication, preface and index. This volume is one of 

 much value and merit, and though it has evidently cost its author 

 an immense amount of labor and study she has most generously 

 presented it to the New York State Museum, in order that, as she 

 says, it may be kept where it will be the most useful, thereby 

 acknowledging by implication the importance of this institution as 

 a repository and source of mycological information. As a mark of 

 appreciation of this munificent gift it has seemed to me most fitting 

 that this list of Maryland fungi and the descriptions of the new 

 species should be transcribed for publication in this report that 

 they may in this way be made still more accessible to the mycolog- 

 ical student and the public. The list with the descriptions of new 

 species is marked F. 



I have from time to time recorded in previous reports examples 

 of herbs and shrubs coming under my observation and illustrating 

 the general principle that feeble, starved or unthrifty plants are 

 more liable to the injurious attacks of parasitic fungi than other 

 plants of the same species growing under more favorable circum- 

 stances and possessing more vigor. I am able now to cite an 

 illustration of this principle in the attacks of parasitic fungi on 

 trees. Many small spruce trees are growing on the marsh just 

 north of Kasoag, Oswego county. These have a starved, unthrifty 

 appearance. Their growth is very slow and their leaves as 

 a rule are scarcely more than half as long as those of vigor- 

 ous healthy spruces. Their feeble condition is manifestly due 

 to the character of the soil in which they grow. It is low, 

 wet, undrained and peaty. There is probably a scarcity of the 

 necessary mineral constituents, and the roots of the trees are too 

 much of the time immersed in standing water. In the midst of the 

 marsh, but on higher and therefore better drained land, other 

 spruces grow. These trees are larger, though probably not older, 

 and they have a more vigorous and healthy appearance. Their 

 ^ leaves are of the usual size and color. So far as could be ascertained 

 they are subject to the same conditions, soil excepted, as those that 

 grow in the lower marsh land around them. In July, when I visited 

 this locality, the foliage of the trees in the marsh land was much 

 discolored and badly affected by a parasitic fungus, Peridermium 

 decolorans. There was scarcely a tree that had not been invaded 

 by it. At the same time the more vigorous spruces on the higher 



