434 



of course be to the advantage of every one to so pin down a species 

 that there could be no difficult}'' in making any one understand 

 what was being talked about without so many conditions and 

 exceptions. The more general a species was made, the more 

 difficult it would be to make others, and when it had been got 

 down to the lowest point the trouble still was to get a species to 

 fit into it because there would be always some point where it 

 would not fit in, but from which it would branch out to some 

 other genus, so that it was not possible in a systematic work to 

 give the whole life history of a species. As regarded the variation 

 in species, modern mycology was " mixed mathematics," the life 

 history was left out altogether, and most mycologists wished 

 these things never did live, but existed only as herbarium 

 specimens. As to certain Australian species of fungi, there was 

 every reason to suppose that they had been introduced from 

 Europe, as the only species known in Australia are the same as 

 those found here, only, as was commonly the case in Australian 

 fungi, they had larger spores. Why this should be so no one 

 knew, and there were many things of this kind which could not 

 be explained or understood. 



Mr. Salmon said he was very glad to hear Dr. Cooke condemn- 

 ing an undue multiplication of species. If they took one feature 

 and one feature alone and made species by using this one character 

 they at once got multiplicity of species. As regarded hibernation, 

 he had only mentioned it as a suggestion for getting over the gap, 

 for in the usual course the spore had a very thin wall, and, as 

 Dr. Cooke said, it was supposed that if it did not germinate at 

 once it died. Saccardo gave a hundred and twenty species, the 

 majority of which were named not in accordance with morpho- 

 logical characters, but according to the host-plants on which they 

 grew. A collector, for instance, would find a fungus on a rare 

 host plant, and would name it accordingly without further 

 consideration. 



The President hoped that the paper and the discussion on it 

 would stimulate some of their members to take up the subject, 

 which offered good promise to those who did so. 



The thanks of the Club were, upon the motion of the President, 

 unanimously voted to Mr. Salmon fol- his paper. 



Mr. Karop said they had another paper on the agenda, but 

 as the time was advancing he thought it would be better to hold 



