139—AMENDE HONORABLE. 
In our pamphlet “Volvae” we questioned the accuracy and 
value of the Agaric list in “Harkness and Moore’s Catalogue of the 
Pacific Coast Fungi” and ascribed the list to H. W. Harkness. Mr. 
Harkness however, in a conversation with us since, disclaimed all re¬ 
sponsibility for the Agaric portion of this list, stating that this part 
was furnished by J. P. Moore, and he thought it was so stated in the 
preface. We are unable to find reference to this matter in the preface 
but are glad to relieve Mr. Harkness of the responsibility. We have 
not however, changed our views concerning the value (?) of this list 
(the Agaric portion), nor of the list of Minnesota by Johnson, nor of 
that of Wisconsin by Bundy. It is not a question of ability but rath¬ 
er lack of experience and of library facilities which has prevented them 
from correctly determining all the Agarics they have met. 
140—NOMENCLATURE. 
Our friend, Walter Deane, in a private letter expresses the opin¬ 
ion that the system we have adopted of omitting the author’s name 
from the name of plants will cause confusion in cases where the same 
name has been applied to different plants by different authors. We 
think not. If we knew that such was the case at the time of consid¬ 
ering the plant we would try to clear up the matter in the text, if we 
did not know it (and it should be our place to know it if we write on 
the plant) we would hope to so plainly describe and illustrate the plant 
under consideration that others could have no trouble in identifying 
the very plant we have in view. While there is of course, some ground 
for ambiguity, the facts are that the usual mistakes are errors of de- 
• termination; errors in describing a plant as new which is not new (the 
most fruitful source of all synonyms); error in identifying a plant as a 
species when it is not that species. If we find a plant that we think 
belongs to Fomes applanatus which in fact does not, how can it help 
matters to write Persoon’s name after it? Mycologists in this country 
have been listing and describing “Fomes applanatus Pers.” or “Poly- 
porus applanatus Pers.” and yet not one of them has had Fomes ap¬ 
planatus. What does writing the name “Persoon” have to do with 
such errors and they are the common mistakes that we all make. In¬ 
stead of being a matter of “justice” to Persoon it is a rank injustice 
for it ascribes a plant to him with which he had nothing to do. The 
facts are that the binomial system of Linnaeus which is even yet so 
highly lauded, has gone out of use. Botanists are using a trinomial 
(even a quadrinomial in some cases) and in our opinion not only to no 
improvement but the greatest hindrance to systematic botany as the 
direct incentive to nine out of ten of our synonyms. 
Nobody accuses Fries of ambiguity and yet Fries did not find it 
necessary in his last and greatest work to write authors' names after 
plants. He gave book references and synonyms and in our opinion 
there only do authors’ names belong. 
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