Vi PREFACE 



ordering of knowledge around this central principle seems valid. 



To stress the fundamental biochemical similarities of all organisms 

 is to assert in a concrete instance the general proposition of the unity 

 of all living things, the unity of the science of biology. The separa- 

 tion of the various fields of biology has caused incalculable damage 

 to all, possibly most to the botanical sciences. This is not to deny 

 the need for specialization within biology, but when this specialization 

 reaches the point where a student can, for example, be considered 

 well trained in botany without having had any contact with animal 

 sciences or with bacteriology, it seems time to reconsider. Some way 

 must be found, both at the teaching and at the research level, to 

 ensure that biologists of all sorts will be conversant with each other's 

 problems and will be able to draw on each other's experience in the 

 prosecution of their own specialties. 



The literature on the physiology of fungi is very large and is grow- 

 ing rapidly. Much of it is of necessity repetitious and limited in scope 

 to particular organisms or to practical applications. Some of it fails 

 to meet criteria of accuracy or logic. I have attempted to exercise 

 the author's prerogative of selection so as to exclude work which, in 

 my judgment, falls into either category. However, I have preferred 

 to err on the side of citing too much literature rather than too little. 

 All-inclusiveness is, of course, out of the question; the references are 

 designed to give immediately most of the work of the last three 

 decades and to open up the entire literature for the student or re- 

 search worker. In this connection, it is to be regretted that the "old- 

 fashioned" review of the literature has been largely squeezed out of 

 modern journal articles. No doubt it was often overdone and wasted 

 valuable space, but the current practice of publishing the past month's 

 work in the form of a letter to the editor has even less to recom- 

 mend it. 



Professor Frank Dickens once spoke in a seminar to the effect that 

 for the purposes of biochemistry the yeasts are considered to be ani- 

 mals. With something of the sort in mind, I have omitted much of 

 the physiological work on yeasts, feeling that it has been well treated 

 elsewhere and that its importance to the filamentous fungi is of a back- 

 ground nature only. On the other hand, I have included the aerobic 

 actinomycetes on the ground that ecologically and physiologically 

 they have close affinities to the true fungi. Both groups are filamen- 

 tous, both require oxygen for growth, both form exogenous spores, 

 and both occur in similar habitats. The scope of the book is then 

 the filamentous fungi and actinomycetes and that work on the yeasts 

 which has a direct bearing on the physiology of the true fungi. 



