Chapter 3 

 CLASSIFICATION AND TAXONOMY OF FUNGI 



If the fungi are among the "simplest of organisms" or the 

 "humblest of plants," as some writers maintain, their classifica- 

 tion should not present any great difficulties. As far as the first 

 phrase is concerned, however, the student is ultimately forced 

 to conclude that there is nothing simple about fungi except our 

 knowledge of them. And as for their "humbleness"— well, that 

 is only the estimation of man, and who would gainsay that he 

 is among the humblest of animals? Moreover so many problems 

 arise in classifyinsf fun^i that volumes have already been written 

 on this subject. 



It is of primary importance in dealing with any group of bio- 

 logical materials that they be organized or classified and named; 

 otherwise all is chaos. "By the classification of any series of 

 objects," Huxley says, "is meant the actual or ideal arrangement 

 together of those things which are alike and the separation of 

 those which are unlike, the purpose of the arrangement being, 

 primarily, to disclose the correlations or laws of union of proper- 

 ties and circumstances and, secondarily, to facihtate the opera- 

 tions of the mind in clearly conceiving and retaining in memory 

 the characters of the objects in question." 



x\ll classifications of fungi are man-made, and none is without 

 flaws. Comparison of them indicates that, as more information 

 has been obtained, the systems of classification which have from 

 time to time been proposed have become increasingly more ade- 

 quate and comprehensive. The ideal classification has not yet 

 been proposed, however, and indeed it could be perfected only 

 after a vast amount of intensive study, much more than has been 

 accomplished to date or that has likelihood of being accomplished 

 within the next few centuries. When such a classification is 

 perfected, it should accurately reveal morphological similarities 



and differences between any and all species and hence should 



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