148 
remarks on fungi and descriptions of new varieties and one new species, 
as follows: Pleurotus atrocceruleus , var. griseus , Goniophora puteana, var. 
tubuculosa and rimosa , Vibrissea truncorum, var. alpipes , Agaricus cam- 
pestris , var. griseus , Armiliaria mellea , var. radicola , and Tricholoma 
maculatescens. On page 36, under Fusicladium destruens it is noted 
that the presence of this species and others is a consequence, and not 
the cause of the death of oat plants. (E) (pp. 38-64). New York 
species of Tricholoma, giving keys, and descriptive notes. (F) (pp. 64- 
75.) Fungi of Maryland, with descriptions of new species by Mary E. 
Banning as follows: Amanita pellucidula, Tricholoma rancidulum , T. 
edurum; T. subdurum. T. magnum , Glitocyle aquatica , Gollybia siticu- 
losa , ( 7 . subrigua , Pholita rubecula , P. mollicula , Hypholoma subaquilum , 
Goprinus virgineus , Russula viridipes , Boletus ignoratus and Hydnum 
ccespitosum. 
The plates accompanying the report are about up to the usual stand¬ 
ard, but are not what might be expected from a rich State like New 
York. They would, too, have been rendered much more convenient for 
use had there been some indication given as to the page where the 
figured species is described. As there is no index one must look through 
the whole of the text to find the description of any desired figure.— 
Joseph F. James. 
Solms-Laubach, H. Graf zu. Fossil Botany , being an introduction to 
Palceophytology from the standpoint of the botanist . English trans¬ 
lation by Garnsey. Revised by Balfour. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1891, pp. 401. 
This book concerns itself only with the remains of ancient plants, 
i. e., with little or nothing more recent than genera dating from the Car¬ 
boniferous era, and not at all with Dicotelydons. A part of one page 
only is devoted to fungi, and the statements are so concise and com¬ 
prehensive that they may be quoted in full: 
“ Scliimper gives us a long list of fungi and lichens which have been described by 
older writers. Where these are not merely spots on leaves, but actual Pyrenomy- 
cetes, Discomycetes, and Basidiomycetes growing on leaves or pieces of fossil wood, 
they still have no value except in showing what was probable without them, namely, 
that fungi formed a part of the ancient floras. When Polyporei and Lenzites occur, 
as in the brown coals, it is not surprising that we should also find silicified woods 
which have been half destroyed by their mycelia. Such mycelia from the wood of 
the Tertiary have been described by Unger under the name of Nyctomyces. That 
there were fungi in the older formations also is proved by the fragments of thallus 
with local bladder-like swellings which are occasionally found in the tissue of stems 
of Lepidodendron, and which have been figured by Williamson under the name of 
Peronosporites antiquarius, Worth. Smith. Similar objects have been mentioned by 
other writers also—for example, by Renault and Bertrand under the name of Gril- 
letia sphaerospermii—from seeds of the period of the coal measures found in the sili¬ 
ceous fragments of Grand Croix. A form described by Ludwig from coal seams in 
the Urals as Gasteromyces farinosus may be nothing more than an aggregate of spores 
and spore tetrads of some archegoniate plant. That bacteria destroyed the sub¬ 
stance of dead plants during the period of the Coal measures, as they do at the pres¬ 
ent day, is rendered extremely probable by the researches of Van Tieghem, who has 
