WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



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woods in almost every locality. Several others of this class are 

 included in the list given below. 



. Studies of Fungi in West Virginia. 



Observations by the writer on the extent of injury by fungi 

 to forests and forest products in West Virginia have been of 

 the most general nature. A glance at the conditions in the 

 principal forest regions, however, has shown a percentage of in- 

 jury from this cause almost beyond comprehension. The pro- 

 gress of destruction is found to be particularly alarming in the 

 immense burnt-over areas found in nearly every part of the 

 state, and in the cut-over forests where careless methods of lum- 

 bering have left tangled heaps of decaying tree-tops among the 

 scarred and battered growth of young and inferior trees. It Is 

 evident on every hand that the highest possible development of 

 destructive fungi and other disease-producing organisms has 

 been encouraged in the forests of the state by every means com- 

 mon to a policy of carelessness and waste. 



The principal studies and collections of West Virginia 

 fungi have been made by Mr. L. Y\^. Nuttall, formerly of Nut- 

 tallburgj Fayette county, and by Dr. John L. Sheldon, Professor 

 of Botany and Bacteriology at the State University. The work 

 of the former covered a period of several years, especially be- 

 tween 1893 and 1896, in which he collected extensively at odd 

 times on the waters of the New river and its tributaries, fur- 

 nishing most of the 980 fungi listed in Millspaugh and Nuttall's 

 Flora of West Virginia." A large private collection — from 

 which the names and annotations given in the list below were 

 taken — ^has been built up by Dr. Sheldon during his vacations 

 from University work. This collection, which is available to the 

 students in botany at the West Virginia University, has been 

 brought together, not through any special encouragement from 

 the outside but because of the great need of an herbarium at 

 the chief educational institution of the state, and because of the 

 special desirability of a collection of native plants as an aid in 

 teaching systematic botany. 

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