to compilations from various sources, valuable space is occupied by need¬ 
less repetition. 
The colored illustrations are not successful. To familiar species they 
give an unfamiliar look, and for beginners can only be misleading. Yet 
there are one or two marked exceptions to this valuation of them, as for 
example the plate of Clitocybe illudens. The half-tones are excellent and 
well present a number of species. That labeled “ Phallus impudicus” is 
indeed so good that by using the analytical key to the Phalloideae given 
on a neighboring page, the species represented may be at once easily 
identified as Dictyophora Ravenelii. 1 thy phallus impudicus is, in fact, 
very rare, though its name, as in this instance, is frequently given to a 
common and widely distributed species. 
Such a slip as the one just mentioned unfortunately raises a serious 
doubt as to the reliability of the author’s determination of unfamiliar 
species in all cases. In this matter no one is infallible, but it is a little 
disquieting to think that the remarks as to edibility appended to the de¬ 
scriptions may after all not always apply to the species described, but 
rather to some other erroneously identified. This doubt is strengthened 
by an amazing observation under Amanita Frostiana , where the bad 
reputation of Russula emetica is ascribed to the possible confusion of 
that Russula with the Amanita. One would really like to hear what 
Fries would have to say to such a mad suggestion. 
On the Avhole, amateurs may, with perseverance and caution, which 
they must use with any books, get from Mr. Mcllvaine’s volume more 
information than from any other single book in the field at present. It 
is ardently to be hoped, however, that a handier manual, less ambitious 
in some ways and more comprehensive, may'be issued before many years. 
Many students will be sorry that the assistant author, Mr. Macadam, 
evidence of whose painstaking labor is not wanting in many details of 
the performance, could not have influenced Mr. Mcllvaine to assemble 
from original sources descriptions of all the toadstools and related fungi 
found in America, and publish them as an American Sylloge, after (he 
plan of Saccardo. That, if accurately done, would have been a perma¬ 
nently useful work, whereas the present volume must soon find itself sup¬ 
planted. Still, we must be grateful for notes as to actual experiments on 
the edibility of so many species, and that is, after all, what the author 
aimed to give us, and what will secure for his labors the reputation which 
they deserve. 
Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms Edible, Poisonous, etc. By 
George Francis Atkinson, Professor of Botany in Cornell University, 
Ithaca, N. Y., Andrus and Church, 1900; 275 pages, 200 illustrations 
from photographs, besides colored plates and other figures. $3.00. 
Mr. Atkinson’s book makes immediately a favorable impression bv the 
number and excellence of its illustrations. They are from photographs 
taken by the author and represent over one hundred and fifty species as 
they actually look in nature — lacking, of course, the color. To color, 
however, it must be said, a beginner is prone to give much too great 
importance, not having any experience with its variability in these plants. 
Thus it is no real disadvantage to the student to be forced to attend to details 
of texture and structure, such as the camera can faithfully record. Partic¬ 
ularly is this true in the first steps of study, when attention must be paid 
to characteristics by which genera are discriminated, for in the acquirement 
of facility to distinguish one genus from another, color, except that of the 
spores, plays a small part. It is one of the objects of the author, as he states 
