MYCILOGICAL NOTES 
C, G. LLOYD 
Page 1043 
THESES 
Theses are the pests of the librarian. Usually they are 
issued, as separate pamphlets, each requiring a. separate entry in the 
catalogue, and their number is legion, as each student on graduation 
from a- Uniwersity of Europe is required to write and publish a thesis. 
It is but rarely that one of these has enough merit to be worth cat¬ 
aloguing, much less, preserving in a library, for the average student 
has not much practical knowledge and for the most part theses are a. 
maste of time and printer*s ink. 
A pamphlet that recently reached us - ”A critical study of the 
slime molds of Ontario” by Mary E Currie, is we judge of the nature of 
a thesis by a student. But it is such an exception to the usual pro¬ 
duction that it merits' special mention. The paper is, as it states, 
a critical work on slime molds, embracing close, accurate, original 
and practical observations. We know., but little about slime molds and 
have'no ambitions in that line, but if we had we would carefully study 
this paper for it impresses use as- presenting the most interesting part 
of their study, their characters, distribution, frequency or rarity, 
points of difference, in fact the information one wants about the 
plants. We do not indorse the practice of writing personal names after 
plant names, but of course those connected with Universities have to 
follow this fetish of "Science”. And particularly we do not indorse 
the fraudulent practice, so dear to our English friends, of substitut¬ 
ing for the name of the real author of the species the name of the in¬ 
dividual who shuffles it around into another genus, as "lycogala. 
flavo-fuscum. Host.” This practice, based on rascality in the start, 
had produced some wonderfully cheap name juggling, as "Mucilago 
spongiosa, Morg. " and has robbed the old fellows, like Persoon, Bulliard 
and Schraeder, who really made the species known, of all their glory. 
However, these old fellows have been dead so long I suppose they do not 
mind' it now. Besides they ought to be used to it by this time for the 
history of botanical names is a series of continuous jockeying, one 
after the other, of writers getting up all kinds of schemes to sub¬ 
stitute their own names for that of some other fellow, or to put the 
other fellow in parenthesis and. add their own names. 
The one particular, noteworthy and exceptional feature of Miss 
Currie's article is that she can give so much information on her sub¬ 
ject and in not one single instance advance any argument why "Currie” 
should be added to the name of any plant. It would be much better if 
there were more writers on mycology like Miss, Currie. 
POLYSTICTUS XANTHOPUS, YOUNG SPECIMENS FRBM E. D. MERRILL 
PHILIPPINES (Fig. 1916).- We get a great many specimens of Polystictus 
xanthopus but this collection (McGregor 5232 ) from the Philippines is 
the first we have seen that seems to indicate how it develops. The 
pileus is: formed at a very early stage and both the pilaus and the stem 
grow concurrent. This is the way perhaps that most stipitate polypo- 
roidss develop, but not Polyporus lucidus and similar species (forms). 
In Polyporus lucidus the stem first develops (Fig. 1917) and after it 
has become almost full size, the pileus ia developed from the top of 
the stem. It is not unusual for us to receive these stems with no in¬ 
dication even of a pileus starting to grow.. 
