middlebury. 
Two of the pleasantest days I have spent were in a quiet visit 
with Prof Burt at Middlebury, Vermont. I am very strongly impres¬ 
sed with Prof. Burt’s method and the thoroughness of the work that he 
is doing in the Thelephoraceae. The paper will probably appear 
within a year and will be a credit to American Mycology, and the most 
important contribution ever written in this country. We all admire 
thorough work and it is a pleasure to praise a man who goes to the 
bottom of his subject. One who has not seen Prof. Burt at work, has 
not seen the hundreds and hundreds of mounts representing type ma¬ 
terial from all the leading herbaria, can ever appreciate the vast 
amount of patient labor that has been devoted to the subject. I do 
not believe that Prof. Burt is tinctured with the modern name-chang¬ 
ing mania. I believe he will employ in the main the principles of 
naming in general use. And it would be a boon to Mycology if the 
names he selects are taken as the names of the plants, and thus let the 
antiquarian investigations as to this order end with this paper. It 
seems to me a shame that a man who takes up the study of a subject 
in Mycology, as Prof Burt has taken up the Thelephoraceae, must 
spend ten times as much time solving puzzles, finding out what others 
have called plants, as he does studying the plants themselves. 
CAMBRIDGE. 
It was with some misgivings that I made my bow at Harvard 
and met Professors Farlow and Thaxter. I did not know how these 
college bred men, who had lived and breathed all their lives in the cul¬ 
tured and learned atmosphere that permeates everything at Harvard, 
would receive a country bred visitor from the west. It was gratifying 
to be made to feel at home and in addition to have all the priceless 
treasures of the Harvard collection placed at my service. I spent a 
• week in the museum, mostly studying the Curtis collection of Gastro- 
mycetes, which is of the greatest value as representing Berkeley’s 
views of American species. Prof. Thaxter devoted considerable time to 
showing me specimens and drawings of the Eaboulbeniacese" and opened 
my eyes upon a new world. I have, of course, known casually of the work 
he was doing in this order, but I did not realize the beauty and variety 
of the species nor the fascination of the work. Prof. Thaxter is prac¬ 
tically exploring an unknown world. He is not hampered with the 
debris left by previous workers, nor does he have to spend most of his 
time unraveling puzzles of man’s making. He can devote all of 
his inquiries to the secrets of Nature, and Science can be congratulated 
that the initiatory work is in such capable hands. So much of my time 
at Cambridge was taken up with the study of the Curtis collection that 
I had little opportunity to meet the mycologieal workers, so numerous 
in the vicinity of Boston. I took dinner with Prof. Hollis Webster 
at the Harvard Union. I am afraid most of Prof. Webster’s time has 
been devoted lately to matters not strictly mycologieal. In fact, his 
engagement to a charming young lady has been recently announced, 
and we can all know how pressing the demands of these matters are on 
a man’s time Of course I could not leave Cambridge without calling on 
my old-time friend, Walter Deane. 
