THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIV 



phaenogams, 15 pages only are given to fungi, including 

 Agaricus 27 species, Boletus 12, Hydnum 4, Phallus 2, 

 Clathrus 3, Elvela 2, Peziza 8, Clavaria 8, Lycoperdon 9 

 and Mucor 11. To these must be added 3 of the species 

 of Tremella placed by Linnaeus in algae, making 89 fungi 

 in all. Of these not one is extra-European and only 8 

 are cited as growing in Italy or southern Europe. To con- 

 sider that a work of such a limited scope should serve as 

 a basis of nomenclature of a group whose species are 

 numbered by thousands seems to me preposterous. All 

 that we can say of the fungi in the " Species Plantarum" 

 is that they show plainly that in 1753 next to nothing was 

 known of that large group, and one may be pardoned for 

 saying that in what Linnaeus wrote about fungi he was 

 not a Linnaeus. We must search elsewhere for a funda- 

 mental work on the subject. In the later editions of the 

 ''Species" and the "Systema Vegetabilium, " as I have 

 said, the treatment of fungi is not in any way satisfac- 

 tory, and it was not until about fifty years after the pub- 

 lication of the "Species" that there appeared anything 

 which could be called a general and comprehensive work 

 on the species of fungi. If mycologists were asked who 

 exerted the greatest influence in placing systematic my- 

 cology on a firm basis they would say Elias Pries and the 

 "Systema Mycologicum," of which the first volume ap- 

 peared in 1821, had an influence in shaping the study as 

 no other work has had. In saying this I do not wish in 

 any way to underrate the value of the "Synopsis Meth- 

 odic -a Fungorum" of Persoon, issued in 1801, but of the 

 two I think that the "Systema" is the one which has had 

 decidedly the greater influence in shaping the progress 

 of descriptive mycology. In its three volumes together 

 with the two volumes of the "Elenchus" which is a part 

 of the "Systema," we find for the first time an account 

 of the mycological flora of a considerable portion of the 

 world rather than an account of certain orders of fungi, 

 mainly of Europe. In the "Epicrisis" of 1836-38, the 

 "Summer Vegetabilium Scandinavia?, " 1849, and the 



