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experienced how much such a treatment tends to Increase, rather than diminish, 

 the difficulties of a more thorough study. Hardly, therefore, had I brought 

 the "System" to a conclusion than I set about for the third time a fresh 

 examination of the fungal world from the very beginning. In doing this I 

 treated my previous writings as merely external auxiliaries, and I subjected 

 every department to a new analysis with increased and novel aids. In the 

 summers of 1S32-34 I wandered daily in the forests, observing the Hymenomy- 

 cetes (especially, of these, the Cortinarii), and comparing again and again my 

 published description with Nature's moulding. In the winter and spring I 

 collected Pyrenomycetes, and examined them with the microscope, which had 

 received great improvements, both of construction and power, since the publi- 

 cation of the earlier portions of the " Sy sterna." In the winter of 1832-33 

 was published a very ample collection of Lichens, and in that of 1833-34 an 

 equally large gathering of Pyrenomycetes. The sketch of a new disposition of 

 classes separating Discomycetes from Hymenomycetes was elaborated in those 

 years and appeared first in 1835 in the " Flora of Scania." Now that I had 

 fixed my abode at Upsala, I felt at once that I had been translated as it were 

 into a new fungal world. My excursions during the years 1835-37, which I pur- 

 sued with unwearied diligence, enabled me to collect a great harvest of Cor- 

 tinarii, Hydna, &c, many of which were then collected for the first time. In 

 January 1837 my "Criterion of a Mycological System" was sent to press, 

 though from the difficulty of sufficiently illustrating the work (each synonym for 

 instance requiring to be many times extracted and tracked through numerous 

 books) it received its final shape only in June, 1S38. In truth I can scarcely 

 believe that any similar botanical work has required or has actually embodied 

 observations so assiduous, or from their very nature so protracted, as this of mine 

 has done ; nor that any can have involved study more intense or more com- 

 prehensive in its range of authorities, which extends back even to the dawn 

 of the science. The extreme conciseness, the almost statuesque style I 

 adopted, the task I imposed on myself of omitting everything of which I might 

 fail to convey a perfectly clear notion, increased, rather than diminished the broad 

 proportions of my edifice. I had also formed the design of giving a new Synopsis 

 of the Ascomycetes, worked out from six hundied new discriminations. My 

 contemporaries, however, led by Corda, with a manifestly insufficient knowledge 

 of the more perfect Fungi, formed an estimate of my exertions altogether inade- 

 quate. I allow that my present labours, more trained and better skilled, will 

 now produce a richer fruit, and I rejoice to do so ; but this cold reception made 

 me reluctant to waste time, strength, and money on work so thankless and ill- 

 appreciated, so that the design which I should have had high gratification in 

 completing, rests only in outline. 



In the year 1844 the Royal Society of Science of Holm decided to paint at 

 their own expense all the species of the Hymenomycetes which could not be pre- 

 served in a dry state, and called on me to assume the task of directing the artists. 



