248 M. C. COOKE ON BLACK MOULDS. 



groups, their relationship to each other, and their systematic and 

 orderly arrangement, their affinities and their differences, and their 

 geographical distribution. It is not uncommon to find those of the 

 first group, the biologists, or physiologists, claiming a higher posi- 

 tion for themselves than they accord to students of the other class, 

 and even sneering at them as mere species-makers, or compilers of 

 catalogues. This is not only unjust, but untrue ; both are equally 

 useful and equally essential, and should not be the subject of com- 

 parison. The work of the former is a great help to the latter, 

 whilst without classification there could be no science. Each has 

 his own work to do as helper to the other. If I may judge from 

 my own experience, it is often the case that the individual has little 

 power to control the direction of his studies after he has once 

 started on his course. My own predilections would be in favour of 

 more exclusively physiological investigations, but finding no sys- 

 tematic arrangement of the British Fungi in existence ten years 

 ago, as the basis of operations, I set myself at first to what I con- 

 ceived the most essential work, and issued the " Handbook." Then, 

 I thought, surely it would be permitted me to pursue some course of 

 investigation ; but, on the contrary, the publication of the book 

 increased the number and interest of the workers, and gave such an 

 impetus to British Mycology, that at once I became drawn into and 

 involved in a maze of correspondence, not only in the British 

 Islands, but over Europe and America, with regard to the species 

 contained in this book, and the two thousand soon became three 

 thousand ; so that in self-preservation and in self-defence I was 

 driven to the study of allied species in other countries, and now I 

 am so committed, by the study of certain groups of which I have 

 consequently acquired a large experience, that 1 have no alternative 

 but onwards, or to relinquish the study altogether. The power of 

 circumstances over individuals in directing the course of their literary 

 or scientific career must greatly counteract and overcome individual 

 inclinations, however much we may flatter ourselves upon our own 

 free agency. There is still another reason why I am precluded from 

 absolute physiological studies. Having espoused what might be 

 termed strong conservative views on mycological matters, I feel it 

 my duty to science to resist, not only by words, but by work, the 

 innovations of a modern school of Radicalism which threatened to 

 sweep away all old landmarks, and, by wholesale manufacture of 

 new genera and species on illogical, shifting, and unstable bases, to 



