207 



Dr. Cooke had treated the subject so exhaustively that he felt bound to 

 admit that whatever balance of opinion he might have had on the other 

 side had been transferred after hearing this very able paper. 



Mr. Frank Crisp wished to enter a mild aud friendly protest against 

 the way in which Dr. Cooke had spoken of such men as Stahl and 

 Schwendener. They were men of great respect in their own country, 

 and he thought it was hardly well for it to go forth that they had been 

 referred to slightingly by any one connected with the Quekett Club. 



Mr. A. D. Michael said there was just one little point to which he 

 should like to call attention, and that was that he thought the definition 

 given of parasitism was rather liable to lead to error. If they were to take 

 it that the parasite lived necessarily at the expense of the organism upon 

 which it was parasitic, then some other term must be found for those 

 which were always found in connection, and which did not live at the 

 expense of each other. Almost every bird had Dermaleiclii upon it, and 

 if we were to trust the authority of the best observers Dermaleichus is 

 not injurious to the bird ; but also living on the bird was found a Cheyletm, 

 which devoured the Dermaleichus. Here, then, were two distinct classes 

 of creatures living upon the same organism without being in any way 

 injurious to it. If these were not parasitic they must find some other 

 name for those which lived on others without drawing their sustenance 

 from them. 



Dr. M. C. Cooke said he had very little to say in reply to the observa- 

 tions w T hich had been made, and indeed he thought very little was necessary. 

 He thought that Mr. Michael had made a man of straw and then knocked 

 him down, probably not having clearly understood his meaning. Certainly 

 Dermanyssus was a parasite, but pai'asites were not necessarily injurious to the 

 creatures on which they lived. His remarks, however, referred to the parasi- 

 tism of fungi only — to which he believed his observations correctly applied. 

 He thought that his friend Crisp had made a slight mistake — he did not 

 call Stahl any names, because he knew him to be a learned professor, 

 who had done much good work in his time ; therefore he had nothing 

 disrespectful to say of Stahl. He pleaded somewhat guilty, however, of 

 using rather epithetical terms of Schwendener. He knew nothing of 

 Schwendener, neither did anybody else, except that he had borrowed an 

 idea from De Bary, and then got a little cheap popularity out of it. As 

 regarded the remarks of Mr. Stewart, he must say that they were put 

 forward in such a way as to leave no room for any one to complain, the 

 gentlemanly manner in which he could bring anything forward was so well 

 known, and the manner in which he had got up to reply to what was a 

 deadly attack upon his position was worthy of all praise. As to the 

 question itself, he did submit that there was a good deal in it which might 

 seem attractive, and there was also something in what had been said as to 

 Specialists ; but, on the other hand, he thought it must be conceded that 

 they had an amount of experience which others had not. He would venture 

 to say that after having had an experience of twenty-five years in the stady 

 of fungi, he was in a better position to form an opinion on some points than 



