IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
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collecting thena, in a fashion describing them, naming and 
occasionally figuring them. In 1873-75 Rostafinski, under direc- 
tion of De Bary, undertook the first systematic presentation 
of the group as a whole, properly separating the slime moulds 
from the fungi, basing subsequent classification upon char- 
acters unused before, characters chiefly microscopic, and for 
the first time in the case of the great majority of the forms 
studied, offered specific descriptions sufficiently exact, and pre- 
sented intelligible figures. I have said that Rostafinski based 
his specific descriptions upon characters revealed by a micro- 
scope: not only so but it must be considered that his work was 
effected by the aid of a good microscope, one which enabled him 
to go into details of spore measurement, spore sculpture and 
so on, to an extent to his predecessors undreamed, to most of 
them indeed impossible. In the preparation of his classic, he had 
access to all the literature of his subject and generally employs 
for genera and species names already in use. Furthermore he 
gives for all such species a synonomy which must strike every 
student as liberal in the extreme. For instance, in the case of 
Fuligo varians Sommf. , the synonyms quoted number 42. But 
when it comes to selecting the particular name which he 
has adopted, Rostafinski was often somewhat arbitrary. Not 
only does he discard often the specific name which by his list 
of synonyms has conceded priority, much less does he follow 
the rule which adopts ‘ ‘ the name given first with the genus in 
which the species now stands,” but he seemed often to discard 
any and all names, and to name his species without regard to 
any rule, but purely in accord with his own taste or preference. 
For twenty years Rostafinski’s work has been unassailed, 
partly because of its inherent exellence and the great name of 
his master Be Bary, which seemed to stand as a guarantee 
behind it, and partly no doubt because of the unintelligible 
Polish dialect in which the book was given to the world. The 
Germans let the thing alone as opus p>erfectum, the English bot- 
anists were content with Cooke’s paraphrase and there the 
matter stood. Massee, in his Monograph of 1892, followed 
almost implicitly the Rostafinskian nomenclature, and even 
quoted his synonyms intoto. Meantime some continental 
writers, as Rannkier in Denmark, were becoming reckless, and 
Mr. Lister the latest English monographer, was preparing to 
overturn the whole Rostafinskian list. This author is not only 
extremely radical in his omission and consolidation of pre- 
