MYCOLOGICAL NOTES 
C. G. LLOYD 
Page 1028 
observations of his numerous writings, which have served so grandly 
to guide Mr. Lloyd in the midst of the labyrinth of mycological 
nomenclature. 
While we are on the subject we submit a letter received 
from Mr. W. R. Lowater, Toledo, Ohio, and publish it without changing 
a word. We do not know that we endorse all that Mr, Lowater has said 
particularly regarding ourself, but we believe there is a great 
deal more truth in his comments than mycologists in general recognize 
As Mr. Lowater is a comparative stranger to us and we have no per¬ 
sonal acquaintance with him nor have we been in correspondence with 
him, there was certainly no personal bias in his remarks. The 
taxonomic and historical side of mycology has gotten into a hopeless 
tangle, due as I have always contended to the curse of adding per¬ 
sonal names to plant names and the resulting poor quality of work 
done mainly with this subject, and he who cleaned the Augean stables 
had a simple task compared to one who desires to get any definite 
sense out of mycology under present conditions. 
Toledo, Ohio, 7-24-20. 
C. G. Lloyd, 
Dear sir: 
I recently received from you a package of pamphlets 
for which I herewith render thanks. 
I can not too highly commend you for the method you have 
adopted in presenting your subject. After having read your Synopsis 
of the Known Phalloids with the accompanying illustrations I feel 
there is at least one group of fungi that I will be able to resolve 
into genera and species without the fear of being all wrong. In 
fact, reading your oamphlets, after having read the general run of 
taxonomic literature was like dropping from the abstrusities of Kant 
and Hegel to the straightforwardness and lucidity of Darwin. 
Incidentally no person who has the welfare of science at 
heart could do otherwise than approve of your merited condemnation 
of egotists and nature fakers, and to these 1 wish to add another 
more pernicious than the others, in so far as his influence is more 
general and can not be escaped, viz: the pedant, I doubt whether 
there is another branch of the natural sciences that is so cursed 
with the dead hand of the past, with straight-laced orthodoxy, as is 
mycology, a condition of affairs well enough adapted to the exploita¬ 
tion of individual pedantry, but detrimental to the advancement of 
irycological learning. I refer to the systematic, taxonomic portions 
of its literature. The accepted analyses of orders, families and 
genera and the descriptions of species are too often allegories 
rather than descriptions, or at best descriptions that are useless 
without an explanation of what the description means. These descrip¬ 
tions are all run through a planer and planed to the same thickness, 
then all are sawed off to the same length, and there you are - now 
locate your specimen. While a drawing, a reproduction of a photo¬ 
graph or a word here and there in plain, prosaic language would 
enable the investigator to locate his specimen more readily, such 
word or assistance is not forthcoming, not from him, the pedant, he 
would be compromising his dignity, lowering the ethical standard of 
