of 1882, and in August was covered with coarse grass and weeds. No
plants were found there in satisfactory quantity, but those figured
on Plate VIII. were found half a mile beyond. This shows how draining
removes the malaria plants.]

From the description I think you have placed your plants in the right
family. And evidently they come in the genera named, but at present
there is in the authorities at my command so much confusion as to the
genera, as given by the most eminent authorities, like Nageli, Kutzing,
Braun Rabenht, Cohn, etc., that I think it would be quite unwise for
me to settle here, or try to settle here, questions that baffle the
naturalists who are entirely devoted to this specialty. We can safely
leave this to them. Meantime let us look at the matter as physicians
who desire the practical advantages of the discovery you have made.
To illustrate this position let us take a familiar case. A boy going
through the fields picks and eats an inedible mushroom. He is poisoned
and dies. Now, what is the important part of history here from a
physician's point of view? Is it not that the mushroom poisoned the
child? Next comes the nomenclature. What kind of agaricus was it? Or was
it one of the gasteromycetes, the coniomycetes, the hyphomycetes, the
ascomycetes, or one of the physomycetes? Suppose that the fungologists
are at swords' points with each other about the name of the particular
fungus that killed the boy? Would the physicians feel justified to sit
down and wait till the whole crowd of naturalists were satisfied, and
the true name had been settled satisfactorily to all? I trow not; they
would warn the family about eating any more; and if the case had not yet
perished, they would let the nomenclature go and try all the means that
history, research, and instructed common sense would suggest for the
recovery.