MYCOLOGICAL NOTES 
C. G. LLOYD 
Page 1040 
of plant than a rat-tail file has to a piece of Venetian lace, and 
Scopoli had nothing whatever to do with this plant, judging from his 
picture. And I also object to calling it "Hemitrichia Serpula, Rost." 
for this plant was well known and well named "Sperpula" in the proper 
genus as these plants were then classified years before Rostafinskiego 
was born. To represent that he named it is a fraud on the face of it. 
Any system of securing uniformity in nomenclature by going 
back to Linnaeus as "legalized" by the "lawmakers" at Brussels is 
absolutely chimerical, particularly if based on Rost.'s alleged, 
chronological order. It is my belief there were very few men at 
Brussels that knew a Myxomycete from a. piece of moldy cheese, and as 
a legislative body they were just about as competent to make rules 
regarding Myxomycetes as I should be to define the rules of harmony 
in music, and I know not one note from another. Notwithstanding the 
diversity as to names, and the names employed by writers on Myxomy^ 
cetes are about as uniform as a.crazy quilt, the subject is in much 
better and more satisfactory condition than are most sections of 
Mycology. This is due to the work done by Lister in London as to the 
family in general, and to Macbride in this country. Most of their 
time, however, has been devoted to investigating the mistakes of the 
wonderful discoveries of "new species" and disposing them in the rub¬ 
bish pile called synonymy. There are many cases recorded where men 
have discovered "new species" of Myxomycetes who did not know a My¬ 
xomycete from a, Hyphomycete or from a last year's bird nest, for that 
matter. And if you will analyse Lister's synonymy you will be sur¬ 
prised how many there are of this nature. Professor Macbride's book 
is one of the few practical books we have in mycology. It is out of 
print but we are expecting a new edition to be issued soon. If Pro¬ 
fessor Macbride would disregard the Brussels fiasco and adopt names 
for his plants on the basis of their proper classification, as he sees 
it, and general use and familiarity of the name, we feel sure it 
would meet with favor. Particularly if he would ignore the cheap 
juggling that has been done with the names by looking up dates of 
Rost.'s alleged synonyms and shuffling the names around as Morgan did. 
These running remarks are not for the purpose of soliciting 
specimens of Myxomycetes for we know,but very few of the large ones 
and have hundreds of the little fellows unnamed now in our museum of 
which we know, practically nothing at all, 
LYCOGALA FLAVOFUSCUM AND RETICULARIA LYCOPERDON. 
My apologies are due and are extended to the following cor¬ 
respondents for misdeterminations of Lycogala flavofuscum as being 
Reticularia Lycoperdon: Anthony Killgore, New Jersey; Frank H Ames, 
New York;, Dr. M. S. Whetstone, Minnesota; Ernest Krnest Knaebel, 
Washington, D.C.; Burtt Leeper, Ohio; Dr. W. H, Ballou, New, York; 
David Griffin, Vermont; Rev. J. Rick, Brazil. I have no desire to 
escape responsibility for these mistakes, but I have never scudies 
Myxomycetes in the museums and drew my conclusions from books, and 
could not understand how Lycogala flavofuscum could be so named if it 
has no yellow at all about it and is silvery grey, nor why books in 
which I looked iit up described it as ochraceous brown or purplish 
brown. 
