, 1894.) Botany. 605 
: BOTANY: 
Thaxter's Studies of the Laboulbeniacez.—Mr. Thaxter has 
recently issued the fifth of his preliminary papers upon the Laboulben- 
iacec preparatory to the monograph of that group upon which he is 
engaged. In this paper he describes four new genera and fourteen 
new species, and gives a synopsis of the described species of the group. 
As it is indicated that the paper in question is to be the last of his 
preliminary papers, a few words as to his work upon the group and the 
effect which it seems likely to have may be timely. 
Although the first representatives of the family were noticed as early 
as 1852, and received their first systematic treatment in 1869, it isonly 
within a short time that the group has been thoroughly studied and 
any great number of forms discovered. In fact the great majority of 
the forms have been found in this country by Mr. Thaxter. In the 
first of his preliminary papers, in 1890, Mr. Thaxter states the total 
number of described species at fifteen. In the present paper he enu- 
merates in the course of his synopsis twenty-three genera and one 
hundred and twenty-two species. The difference is mostly due to his 
researches. 
The Laboulbeniacee are parasites on the outer surfaces of insects, 
principally of insects which live in or about the water. They grow 
either singly or in a thick fur, and are very minute, the largest 
not exceeding 1 mm., and most species being about 0.5 mm. in length. 
They have no mycelium and consist solely of a short stalk and a re- 
productive apparatus. 
Reproduction in these fungi is of one sort only. Karsten was the 
first to describe it and he compared it to the sexual reproduction in the 
Floridee. Peyritsch afterward made more exact and extensive observa- 
tions and came to the conclusion that the supposed abscission of sperm- 
atia did not take place and that the sexual nature of the process was 
doubtful. Since these observations little or nothing has been published 
on the subject and for that reason the following statement made in the 
present article is of great interest : 
“ The writer’s observations, based upon an examination of several 
thousand specimens illustrating more than one hundred species and 
1 Edited by Prof. C. E. Bessey, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. _ 
