158 Report on Botany. 



pleteness. All classes of plants, save the wholly micro- 

 scopic desmids and diatoms, are represented in it. The 

 best specimens in all cases of choice have been selected, 

 and the purpose has been, not to show merely a stem or 

 branch bearing leaves and flowers, as is too often the case 

 in herbaria, but to exhibit the whole plant, including root, 

 fruit and seeds, also all the marked varieties of variable 

 species. In the case of the fleshy fungi, which generally 

 shrink and change color notwithstanding the best efforts 

 at drying them, colored sketches of the fresh plant are 

 placed on the species sheet with the dried specimen. To 

 the specimens of minute species magnified sketches of the 

 plant and its characteristic organs are often added. Be- 

 sides this the collection contains the type specimens of 

 more than three hundred new species of fungi, a fact 

 which gives to the herbarium an unusual value and which 

 in future years will cause it to be eagerly consulted and 

 confidently resorted to as an arbitrator in cases of doubt, 

 perplexity and dispute. 



In pursuing the investigations that have been under- 

 taken by one of your committee, most interesting disco- 

 veries are sometimes made. We will venture to speak 

 briefly of one or two of these made the past year, partly 

 because every new discovery adds something to the sum 

 of our knowledge and partly because such discoveries tend 

 to encourage further inquiries into the mysteries of na- 

 ture. 



In a certain part of the great wilderness known as the 

 North woods, a small whitish mushroom-like fungus was 

 found. It had every appearance of being an Agaricus be- 

 longing to the subgenus Clitocybe. The only remarkable 

 feature about it was caused by the presence of a few long, 

 straight, stiff hairs scattered over its surface, an unusual 

 character in a Clitocybe. As it was desirable to have 

 spores of the plant to place in the herbarium with the 



