54 Bibliographical Notices. 



physiology and classification, we look upon this edition of the Ele- 

 ments, combined with School Botany, as among the best works which 

 he can procure. 



Illustrations of British Mycology. By Mrs. T. I. Hussey. 

 Reeve, Brothers. 4to. Parts 1 & 2. 



There is perhaps no country in which so little use is made of the 

 various esculent fungi which abound everywhere in early autumn, as 

 Great Britain. There is no doubt that we have some fifty or sixty 

 species which would afford wholesome and agreeable food, and yet 

 scarcely more than a tenth of this number are ever admitted to our 

 tables. This perhaps is in some measure owing to the circumstance 

 that no British work on esculent fungi, as far as we are aware of, 

 has ever appeared, except the little treatise entitled the ' Mushroom 

 and Champignon ' illustrated, which is confined to a very few spe- 

 cies. This desideratum is now supplied by the more general work 

 of Dr. Badham, and by the ' Illustrations of British Mycology' now in 

 progress, which bids fair to be one of the most important that has 

 ever appeared on useful and noxious fungi. The illustrations are 

 preceded by a general sketch of fungi founded on the concluding 

 volume of the ' English Flora.' Since its publication the real struc- 

 ture of the hymenium has been ascertained, and consequently some 

 improvements and alterations are requisite ; a sketch of these has 

 been given by the author of that volume in Dr. Lindley's • Vegetable 

 Kingdom,' and since its publication a long article has appeared on 

 the subject in Orbigny's ■ Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle ' from the 

 pen of M. Leveille, agreeing in all essential points with Mr. Berke- 

 ley's arrangement, and this has been applied by Dr. Mougeot to an 

 extensive series of fungi published in the statistical account of the 

 Department des Vosges. It has been objected to both, perhaps 

 with some justice, that they are founded solely on the fructification, 

 without paying sufficient attention to morphology ; it is however 

 certain that the real affinities of the genera are more truly indicated 

 than in any former arrangement, and we shall be rejoiced if the 

 forthcoming morphological arrangement by Professor Fries in the 

 ■ Summa Vegetabilium Scandinavian ' remedies acknowledged de- 

 fects without creating new difficulties. We do not blame Mrs. Hus- 

 sey therefore for adopting the arrangement of the ' English Flora ' in 

 preference to that in the * Vegetable Kingdom,' in which indeed 

 there are some manifest errors, her object being to refer students to 

 the most readily available source of information. 



Some excellent observations follow on collecting and examining 

 fungi, which will be read with interest even by practised students ; 

 and the same may be said of the general accounts of the species 

 illustrated, in which there is always something worth notice, either 

 from its intrinsic value, or from being placed in a novel point of 

 view. It is not indeed to be expected as regards a subject of such 

 immense extent, and requiring access to a multitude of rare and ex- 

 pensive books, in various languages, that in a work whose merits rest 



