INTRODUCTION 



THERE are many kinds of living organism.s whose interactions serve to 

 maintain or to break the balance of Nature. Some of them, green 

 plants, build up organic substances from the inorganic matter at their dis- 

 posal. They are basic to all life on the earth, for without them almost all 

 other organisms would eventually perish. The animals reach probably the 

 greatest degrees of complexity but they must take their basic organic 

 foods directly or indirectly from the chlorophyll-containing plants. Be- 

 sides these two great groups of organisms there are the numerous bacteria 

 — minute breakers-down of the complex organic substances built by the 

 green plants and by the animals and also builders-up of some of the 

 inorganic substances that the green plants need. Aside from these there 

 is the great horde of organisms called fungi. Perhaps there are 100,000 

 species of them, according to Bisby and Ainsworth (1943), but of the 

 100,000 named fungi probably not over 40,000 are, according to these 

 authors, valid species, leaving 60,000 or more to be recognized and de- 

 scribed in the future. It is with the fungi that mycology has to do. Ordi- 

 narily they are considered by most botanists to be plants, but Martin 

 (1932) and others who followed him, have suggested that fungi may be 

 neither animals nor plants but a third kingdom, of common origin with 

 them, which has undergone a parallel development to the animal and 

 plant kingdoms. 



Fungi 



There is no general agreement as to the limits of the forms that should 

 be called fungi. Some of the earlier mycologists included the bacteria with 

 them, but that is rarely done nowadays. The majority of botanists, or to 

 be more specific, of mycologists, include the Slime Molds (Mycetozoa or 

 Myxomycetes) among the fungi. Yet the great German mycologist and 

 plant pathologist Anton de Bary (1831-1888) said (1887), "I have since 

 the year 1858 placed the Myxomycetes under the name Mycetozoa out- 

 side the limits of the vegetable kingdom, and I still consider this to be 



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