Anderson & Ickis : Massachusetts Species of Helvella 205 



Schaeffer, Afzelius, Persoon, Scopoli, Bulliard, Sowerby, .and 

 others who made smaller contributions. But the multiplicity of 

 publications did not result in a harmonious system of nomen- 

 clature. The changing and interchanging of names during this 

 period is very confusing. An examination of the synonymy 

 which is appended under some of the older species such as H. 

 crisp'a and H. lacunosa gives one some idea of the state of the 

 nomenclature at that time. 



Fries, in the second volume of his Systema Mycologicum, 

 treated the genus fully and very clearly, and his work furnishes 

 an excellent basis for our present taxonomy of it. In reading 

 this book one is surprised to find how few taxonomic changes 

 have been made in the last century. To be sure some of the 

 species have been transferred to Gyromitra, which he later 

 (1846) split off from Helvella, and a few others are now be- 

 lieved to be among closer relations in the Pezizales, but most of 

 his species are still in the genus Helvella and bear the same 

 names which he used for them. Also, no small part of the 

 species which have been described since then could be easily 

 referred to species which he described. 



Since his time a number of species have been described from 

 various parts of the world by various authors. European species 

 have been well monographed by Rehm, Massee, Gillet, Phillips, 

 et al., excellent colored plates published by Boudier, Cooke, and 

 others. But on turning to the American literature of the genus 

 we find very little of value. A few new species have been de- 

 scribed by Peck and Clements — some few of which are really 

 new, others probably merely variations of old species. Under- 

 wood published in 1896 a list of all species which had been re- 

 ported from North America. A few local lists, sometimes ac- 

 companied by descriptions and figures, such as those of Hone 

 (1904) and Burt (1899), complete the sum of American liter- 

 ature on the genus. 



Turning now to the literature which deals with collections of 

 Helvella within the state of Massachusetts we find that the full 

 extent of our information is based on the inclusion of names of 

 a few species in published local lists of fungi. The first of these 



