54 
JOURNAL OF MYCOLOGY. 
[VOL. II, 
yet identified. By this time my buggy was loaded, and, though I by no 
means considered the log exhausted, I marked the locality, in my mind, 
and wended my way home, more than ever impressed with a sense of the 
little I know and how much there is to learn, even from a log. Here 
were fifteen species obtained with no great effort in a very short time. 
Two are also tropical, perhaps more. But one lesson is that nothing, 
however common, should be neglected. I omit musci — several species. 
SKETCH OP CURTIS. 
BY WM. R. DUDLEY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 
It is certainly an interesting and important fact in the history of 
Cryptogamic Botany in America that its two most eminent followers, 
both northern men by birth, should have been called by their professional 
duties, as clergymen, to the great state of Korth Carolina, early in their 
careers. This state is probably unsurpassed in America in the variety 
of its plant forms. Its position is central, and the variation of soil and 
climate remarkable. From the broad, low savannahs to the subalpine 
summits of “The Black Dome,” “The Roan,” “The Grandfather,” 
and their richly-forested slopes and valleys, would indeed have been the 
chosen field for this pioneer work, if choice, instead of accident, had 
guided these men there. The work of Schweinitz, from 1812 to 1818, and 
Curtis, from 1830 to 1867—the date of the publication, by the latter, of 
the Catalogue of the Indigenous and Naturalized Plants of 
North Carolina, —resulted in the careful determination, preservation 
and cataloguing of nearly 24,000 species of fungi alone. Indeed, it is 
estimated that nearly two thirds of these were new to science. It must 
be remembered that this was mainly accomplished during the first great 
period of our national existence, viz.: before the civil war, when the 
science of botany did not receive much general encouragement from the 
public or from the schools or colleges, especially in the South. This 
happy outcome of circumstances, as well as his high regard for the dis¬ 
tinguished attainments of Rev. Dr. Curtis, evidently led Dr. Gray, in 
Silliman’s Journal^ in 1868, to urge “our American Mycologist” to 
prepare a Manual of the Fungi of the U. S., saying that, from its 
central position. North Carolina must contain nearly all the species of 
fungi of the Atlantic States, and unless he did write such a work, a vast 
amount of valuable knowledge of the forms of this group would be lost 
to the world, eventually. Unfortunately, such a work was never wiit- 
ten. Had it been, what an impulse would have been given to the study 
of fungi! Iloweyer, it is clear that a great work in this field was done 
by the men of the past generation, and the material used by tfiem is still 
available in herbariums, where it can be consulted by their successors. 
But there has been danger that the history of the labors of tliese inde¬ 
fatigable explorers and writers, among whom we reckon Dr. Curtis as 
