Methodical Synopsis of Fungi

VI
PREFACE.

characters before them; but I warn that this has rarely been done, or in insufficiently broad genera. I could not, therefore, include some fungi described by other authors and hitherto unknown to me, since I often did not know to which families, sections, or subdivisions I should best assign them. I have deferred describing some, which appear to be new, especially species of Agaricus a genus of gilled mushrooms and Sphaeria a genus of flask-shaped fungi which I detected myself or which were communicated to me, until they have been examined more accurately. Because of their extreme affinity, I have indeed enumerated certain ones only as varieties or subspecies, having placed Greek letters before them, as is the custom, which I ask should not be neglected in the examination of fungi. For the sake of brevity and a compression of space, I have cited only necessary synonyms, and I have added brief descriptions and observations to the illustrations of the species.

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