2144 A TEXTBOOK OF THEORETICAL BOTANY 



11. Eumycetae — contd. 



The Second World War interrupted the pubhcation of a work which 

 might have become a standard treatment of the higher Fungi, namely the 

 " Atlas des Champignons de I'Europe", edited by Karina and Pilat. This 

 work which was to have run into a number of volumes was intended to 

 describe and illustrate by photographs all the genera of the higher Fungi. 

 Many changes in nomenclature are introduced but at present the work, 

 which was published in Prague, is too incomplete to judge its final impor- 

 tance. 



In 1943 Sparrow published his " Aquatic Phycomycetes", which deals 

 more fully with the question of the relationships of the lower groups, a 

 problem which is likely to continue for a long time to exercise the minds of 

 mycologists, because of its bearing on the origin of the Fungi. Indeed the 

 whole question of the classification of the Fungi is one of the most debatable 

 subjects in plant classification and there is little probability of any major 

 agreement being reached in the near future. 



THE BACTERIA 



Although the Bacteria were discovered by Leeuwenhoek in the seven- 

 teenth century, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that 

 they were accepted as plants. Before that they were supposed rather vaguely 

 to belong to the Infusoria, an animal group made up mostly of Protozoa. 

 In 1857 Nageli founded a class of Fungi, the Schizomycetes, or " Splitting 

 Fungi", to include the Bacteria, the characteristics of the class being that 

 the organisms were unicellular and that their reproduction was by simple 

 fission of the cells. Some of the genera still recognized were, however, 

 founded before that date, for example Bacterium, Spirillum and Spirochaeta, 

 which were established by Ehrenberg on the basis of their microscopical 

 appearance. The first attempt to group the genera of Bacteria into families 

 was made by Ferdinand Cohn in 1872, based also on microscopical form. 



* One peculiar point about this system is the apparent lack of any recognition of the Bracket 

 Fungi usually included in the Polyporaceae and placed by many in the Aphyllophorales. 



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