Shear & Stevens: Schweinitz Collections of Fungi 339 



note that three hundred ten species are marked " C " in Berkeley's 

 copy of the Synopsis Fungorum. Berkeley apparently studied 

 microscopically the specimens which were to be returned to Curtis 

 as in the margins over eighty habit sketches or drawings of 

 spores with occasional notes have been made in pencil. These 

 occur almost uniformly in connection with species marked " C." 



So far as the writers have been able to learn, Curtis was the 

 first to work with Schweinitz fungi after his death. His own 

 herbarium then probably includes the first material taken from 

 the Schweinitz collection. The specimens sent to Berkeley and 

 to Fries are portions of the duplicates he took at that time. 

 Michener's work was done a few years later and the specimens in 

 his herbarium, which is now in the Mycological Collections of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, were evidently taken after 

 Curtis's. 



Both Curtis and Michener speak, in their letters, of numerous 

 specimens being lacking. Schweinitz, as we stated in a letter to 

 Torrey (Part I, p. 194), preserved very few of the Agarics, and 

 it is evident that insects have caused great destruction among the 

 fleshy forms that were kept. Moreover, in some cases he ap- 

 parently gave away his last specimen of some species, as (41, p. 9) 

 when he sent his only specimen of a species of Hypoxylon to 

 Schwaegrichen. 



Dr. John Shaw Billings was probably the next mycologist to 

 study material from the Schweinitz herbarium. In the intro- 

 duction to his paper on the genus Hysterium (6) he says : " My 

 data for this purpose are derived from the examination of au- 

 thentic specimens in the Schweinitz herbarium, and in the her- 

 barium of Mr. H. W. Ravenel of South Carolina, from specimens 

 named by Rev. M. A. Curtis, and from the description and figures 

 given by M. Duby in his ' Memoire sur la Tribu des Hysterinees, 

 Geneva, 1861/" 



Mr. Wm. C. Stevenson, Jr., of Philadelphia, became interested 

 in the Schweinitz collection of fungi, according to his recent state- 

 ment, about 1872, when he was made a member of the herbarium 

 committee of the Academy of Sciences. Mr. Stevenson's interest 

 in mycology early led to a correspondence and exchange of speci- 

 mens with Mr. J. B. Ellis, of Newfield, N. J., and to a friendship 



