RECENT ADVANCE IN THE STUDY OF 



FUNGI 



By A. LORRAIN SMITH, F.L.S. 



In the early days of botanical study fungi were considered to 

 be of very little importance, either for good or evil. The 

 mushroom and one or two others of the larger kinds, as 

 affording toothsome dishes for the table, were allowed to be 

 of some value ; but, as a class, they were either objectionable 

 or negligible, mysterious in origin, and useful only to poet and 

 artist to heighten the effect of some picture of gloom and decay : 



And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould 

 Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 

 Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 

 With a spirit of growth had been animated ! 



At the present time fungi have come to their own, and no 

 branch of botany now receives more attention. The role that 

 the mycelium alone plays in the soil, in disintegrating the yearly 

 accumulations of plant-wreckage, proves the once-despised mould 

 to be indispensable to further plant-life. Though fungi do not, 

 like nitro-bacteria, directly enrich the soil by collecting nitrogen 

 from the air, recent researches have shown that they furnish 

 carbohydrate material in the form of mannite glycogen, etc., to 

 these bacteria. Since Prof. Frank's discovery of mycorhiza, the 

 fungus that lives in symbiotic relationship with the roots of 

 plants, and aids or supplements the absorptive function of the 

 root-hairs, many experiments have been made, and much has 

 been written for and against Frank's conclusions, but the 

 balance of proof seems largely to uphold the advantage of the 

 symbiosis to the higher plant. Gustave Kunze has shown quite 

 recently that the fungal filaments excrete acids — mainly oxalic 

 acid — to a much greater extent than do the roots of the higher plants. 1 

 They bring into solution the salts necessary for plant-growth, 



1 See Hall, Science Progress, (1906) i. 51, etc., "Solvent Action of Roots upon 

 Soil Particles." 



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