TERMINOLOGY AMONG THE ORDERS OF THALLOPHYTES.
" To understand things in their proper relations is an impor tant part of a student's education." In Botany, as in other sub jects of extensive specialization, the student often fails to get the bearings of his subject, and in his presentation shows an utter lack of what may be called botanical perspective. One cause of this failure is the disposition, now happily growing less, to become botanists without knowing plants ; without knowing them in their gross characters as lvell as their microscopic, in the field in their native haunts, as well as in the paraffin bath ; in their natural en vironment as factors in a life-struggle for existence, as well as with only an environment of celloidin. We have had instances galore of young men without this perspective who have been skilled manipulators of microscopic machinery and little more, whose productions were studies without relations, complete and excellent in themselves, but without any recognized or recognizable bearings on botanical science. May we be protected from a prospective crop of graduates under the inflowing tide of physiological botany, which promises to be the next wave of the subject that sweeps the country, for of all men who do not know plants as a part of their preparation it seems as though the physiological botanist could be capable of the most harm of any.
A second reason why this lack of perspective is sometimes so apparent is the failure to grasp clearly the system of relations ex isting among the various groups of plants. This is partly the fault of those who present the subject, some of whom are the prod ucts of the extreme reaction against the old and meaningless method of study of botany ; partly the fault of the makers of the systems themselves. It is of this last feature that I would speak at some length.
The average student, or even the brightest one, looking through a series of modern text-books, especially those treating of the lower plants, would probably be lost in a maze at the diverse sys tems of terminology and subdivision that are there presented, and if he saw signs of a real system among the various combinations proposed he would get at best an indistinct notion of relationships and coordinations. While nature does not draw many hard and
fast lines, it is still possible to present in a somewhat simple man ner a conspectus of the groups of living things she does develop. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest some methods in which these relations can be more satisfactorily presented to our students, wall less possibility of giving them a confused conglomeration of unrelated categories.
In order to show more clearly the extent of this confusion I have selected for an illustration the group of the Ascomycetes, with particular notice of the allies of PCZ7,T,(7, and will show in par allel columns their arrangement in groups by some of the mod ern authors. I select this group for several reasons, among others the fact that it has been recently treated by several specialists in fungi, although most or all of them are naturally more or less in fluenced by the extensive researches of Brefeld. It is also a group that contains very diverse elements and permits of numberless combinations based on real or supposed relationships. (See table next page.) Of the above statements of a system, that of Von Tafel, con servatively cautious and indefinite, is entirely silent on the group names ; coordinate groups only are recognized and these may probably be taken as the conception of these relations held by Brefeld himself.
Rehm consistently uses the term " Familie " as subordinate to " Ordnung," but complicates his system by the introduction of two additional groups between order and family, " Hauptordnung " and " Unterordnung." His family names lack uniformity as seen in the examples Exoasci, Dothidiaceae, Ascobolcae. In fact the termination -aceac is used by him for groups of at least four dif ferent ranks, as: Ilysteriaceae (Ordnung) Pethiaceae (Hauptord nu ng), Sphaeriaceae (Unterordnung), and Hypocreaceac (Familie).