285 



Thus for the fourth time I approached the study of these Funguses anew. In 

 the last twelve years nearly as many centuries of species have been depicted. 

 When they shall have been given to the world I trust that the determination of 

 their several boundaries will rest on a permanent foundation. As however the 

 cost of this undertaking is not a little appalling, I have judged it useful to edit a 

 Commentary on these delineations, in order to collect within one binding the 

 descriptions of such species as I have selected to be copied, which are now 

 dispersed through various books. Since, however, such a work may find but 

 few readers, only 100 copies have been published. 



Now in the evening of my life I rejoice to call to mind the abundant 

 pleasures which my stndy of the more perfect Fungi, sustained for half a century 

 and some additional years, has throughout this long time afforded me. Although 

 I have not neglected to work out in detail every department of Botany, the 

 Funguses have been my especial delight. The vast multitude of species deters 

 many from this study, but the list of Hymenomycetes is not infinite, (as the 

 Epiphyllimay appear to be, though these present other reasons for examination) 

 and I am pleased to think how rarely, for several years past, the discovery of 

 any new variety has come to my notice. Therefore, to botanists, who can 

 wander at will the country side, I commend the study of these plants, as a 

 perennial fountain of delight and of admiration for that Supreme Wisdom which 

 dominates universal nature. 



[N'ota. Since 1844, I have published only commentaries, in which are de- 

 scribed Preiss' Fungi in Lehman's Plantae Preissianw, Walberg's from Natal in 

 the Transactions of Rl. Sy. Holm ; Afzelius' from Guinea ; Liebmau's from 

 Mexico and the United States, Oersted's from the West Indies and Costo Rica, 

 Didrichs' and Kamphove's from the Nicobars and the Pacific, in Trans. Rl. Sy. 

 Upsala, and various new Hymenomycetes of Swedish growth in the Trans. R. S. 

 of Stockholm. I would desire also to commend to the attention of mycologists 

 several papers in Swedish on the uses and biology of Fungi, which I have pub- 

 lished, especially the "Calendarium Fungorum."] 



OBSERVATIONS. 



This " Historiola Studii mei Mycologici " is appended to the Monographia Hymeno- 

 mycetum Suecise of £li:is Fries. K — C. The interesting but too succinct account it gives of 

 Fries' mycological studies evades, as external perhaps to the limits he had prescribed for 

 himself, nearly all notice of the work he has done in Phanerogamic Botany. His results 

 in this domain also are not a little important ; but here he was no longer turning up an all 

 bat virgin soil, and the visible splendours of his harvest are not so immediately dis- 

 cernible. It could not be however that the critical test, the most subtle acumen, and 

 the diligence scorning fatigue, which have so largely recruited and marshalled into orderly 

 array the undisciplined mycetal cohorts, should have produced no precious fruits when 

 applied to plant tribes already enumerated and grouped. His researches, therefore, and 

 the books which embody them in descriptions uniepjely discriminative and clear, are of 

 high value to the student who desires to take a broader grasp than usual of the British 

 series of flowering plants (coaterminous to the extent of more than three quarters with the 

 Scandinavian series), and are indispensable to the botanist who would trace the Floras of 

 our Islands in their corresponding species and representative congeners through the 

 isothermal latitudes of Northern Europe. It is, however, on the volumes of his strictly 

 Mycological Works, in which he has so marvellously condensed the observations and 

 reasonings of maDy busy years, that he would rest his perpetual fame. Again and again 



