66 
NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE OF THREE SPECIES 
OF FUNGI NEW TO BRITAIN, 
BY WILLIAM PHILLIPS. 
That the study of Mycology is making rapid progress in the estimation of 
English botanists is proved by the fact that no less than three public exhibitions 
of fungi will have taken place during the present year, one in the city of Aberdeen 
a fortnight since, another in connexion with the Royal Horticultural Society in 
London, and the present one in this room, under the auspices of the Woolhope 
Field Club. TI believe I am correct when I say that the credit of originating such 
exhibitions belongs exclusively to your excellent Club, and more especially to the 
fertile brain of one of its chief ornaments. Up to a comparatively recent date 
this branch of botany was confined to the attention of a very limited number of 
students, while it was altogether ignored by what we are accustomed to designate 
“an enlightened public.” This was attributable mainly to the fact that our litera- 
ture, unlike that of France and Germany, contained few works adapted to smooth 
the way of a beginner, in this confessedly difficult study, at a price within the 
reach of ordinary persons. No sooner were such works published than the num- 
ber of students became greatly augmented, and as a necessary consequence our 
Mycological flora became rapidly enriched. In 1836 the fifth volume of ‘‘ Smith’s 
English Flora”’ appeared, containing the first, anything like complete, list of 
British species from the pen of that distinguished botanist, the Rev. M. J. 
Berkeley. This book brought together the information scattered through the 
works of Withering, Bolton, Sowerby, Grevelle, Purton, and other English 
botanists, enumerating and describing 1279 species. The beautiful drawings of 
Sowerby and Grevelle had thrown a charm over the study of Mycology and 
exalted it to a position of eminence it had not previously attained. English 
botanists became enamoured of the study, and they in turn infected a wide circle 
of followers, to whom the appearance of Mr. Berkeley’s work was a great boon. 
The attention of others than professed botanists was thus attracted to this hitherto 
neglected world of vegetation, and men began to see that it comprised forms of 
surpassing beauty, colours the most brilliant and varied, structure the most com- 
plex and interesting. About this time the microscope became a more perfect 
instrument, so that bodies, which like ‘‘nebule” to the early astronomers, were 
perplexing enigmas, were seen to be well defined organs having each its special 
function, while some of the subtle processes of reproduction and growth could be 
carefully observed. M. Corda, a distinguished German Mycologist, in his splendid 
“Prachtflora,” figures the strange and often fantastic, but always beautiful forms, 
