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NOTES ON FUNGI, FORESTAL AND OTHERS. 



MAINLY CORRIGENDA TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF 



BRITISH FUNGI.-' 



By M. C. COOKE, M.A., LL.D., A.L.S., &c. 



[Read at the ''Fungus Foray," October 12th, lOOW] 



I take advantage of this opportunity to address a few words 

 to my mycological friends, not only those who may hear my 

 voice, but those absent ones who will rest content to hear the 

 echoes through the press. Now that, for the past fifteen years, 

 the fungus forays of the celebrated Woolhope Club have practi- 

 cally ceased, opportunities are few for intercommunication with 

 those most interested in the study of Fungi. Notwithstanding 

 all the laudable efforts to infuse life and vigour into the British 

 Mycological Society, I am much afraid that the labour is greatly 

 in vain, and that gradually, since the cessation of the Woolhope 

 Forays, and the decease of the great moving spirit, there has 

 been a gradual, but certain, decadence in interest, in the subject, 

 and the number of students, has been slowly becoming less and 

 less. To me it has been the source of great regret, not only that 

 so many have been removed to a higher sphere, but that of those 

 which were left, so many have become lukewarm and indifferent, 

 and so few young students have come forward to fill the vacant 

 places. I am forced to the conclusion that the study and 

 interest in the larger fungi has subsided into much the same con- 

 dition in which it was nearly half a century ago. This I attribute 

 largely to the falling away of the old school of mycologists, by 

 death or otherwise, supplemented by the collapse of the Hereford 

 Forays. It proves, if proof were needed, how much the 

 prosperity of our local societies depend upon the enthusiasm and 

 self sacrifice of one or two active and energetic men. 



By your permission I will devote a few minutes to what may 

 at first appear to be a personal subject, although I shall 

 endeavour to avoid treating it in a personal manner. You are all 

 aware that I had the good fortune to print and publish a book of 

 figures of fungi, containing portraits, or what were meant to 

 be portraits, of upwards of a thousand species of Gill-bearing 

 Fungi. With whatever success or failure, this was associated, I 



1 These notes, although somewhat foreign to our plan, are printed in our Journal inas- 

 much as they will be useful to students consulting Dr. Cooke's great work, and they also con- 

 tain several corrections and additions to our Epping Forest " Fungus Flora." — Ed.. 



