
          [P.S. -- Please send packet of Texan Fungi by Express to Charleston
 "care of J. & J.D. Kirkpatrick]


 upon. That will be the most important work I can perform in
 this department, I suspect. 


 It was my intention to send you a good Tuckahoe upon Oak
 Roots, in progress of growth; but I forgot it till this moment.
 I regret it much, as I am going to bring you in the end to accept
 my theory. I thought my letter specimen would settle it
 with you, for there was the bark unchanged, the wood all gone,
 & pectin filling up the cavity. Pray tell what has become of
 the  wood in all these cases? If you resolve me this question
 satisfactorily, I shall have to give up; but not till then.
 Prof. [Jacob Whitman] Bailey need not trouble himself to find spores-- they are not
 to be found. All Sclerotioid bodies are in the opinion of
 [Joseph-Henri] Léveillé, [Miles Joseph] Berkeley, &c. to be spurious. [Elias] Fries, however, does not yet
 wholly yield on this point, but his proofs are obscure & imperfect.
 In some cases they are doubtless metamorphosed Fungi-- & this
 may possibly be the case with Pachyma Cocos [now Wolfiporia extensa], though I think not,--
 in all which cases they are imperfect species of other Genera, &
 in others mere diseased enlargements like Phyllerium & Erineum.
 These have no fructification. And Fries himself does not
 pretend to find in Sclerotia anything more than cells, not
 always these, which he supposes are the cells of sporidia. (Vid:
 Summa Vegetab.: Scandinaviae (1849.) Sect. posterior, p. 477. note)[Fries' Summa vegetabilium Scandinaviae]


 Whatever are your conclusions I shall be glad to have them & shall
 also respect them as presumptively more accurate than my own.


 Believe me, Dear Sir, very truly your friend


 M.A. [Moses Ashley] Curtis

        