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from it. I lost no opportunity of searching for it, but it was not until the very 
end of last autumn that I discovered an infested leaf in my parish; that one leaf 
has thousands to follow it this year. I am told that in the places where this 
Puccina first appeared the disease has considerably abated. Now comes the 
question, how came the Puccina here at all? Why did it break out with such 
virulence? Why was it not universal in its attack? Time was necessary, and 
wind, too, for it to reach some places. Moreover, is it going to dieout? Puccinia 
Chrusosplenii was recorded and figured by Dr. Greville in his Scottish erypto- 
gamic Flora. Very great search was made for it by many persons anxious to 
find it. Since Dr. Greville’s death no record of discovery is known until last year, 
when Dr. Buchanan White and myself found it—one near Perth, the other in 
Forden. Where was the plant all those years, and why should its reproduction 
be so far apart as Scotland and North Wales? Then look at the?Uredo Quercus, 
Brond. Asarule it is decidedly scarce. A friend of mine, writing to me this 
week, says :—‘‘ U. Quercus has been glorious at Hollington, just when I was ill and 
could not go for it. The trees have been full of it, I could see that. It grieved me 
to look at them, and know what I had lost for you.” Then see the eccentricity 
of Peronospora Infestans, Mont., how suddenly it broke out, and scattered the 
Trish far and wide through the world from the year of its attack until now. In 
the sister country it brought desolation, famine, death in its course, and would 
have done the same to us had we relied as much as the Irish did on the potato as 
an essential article of food. Then, if you think of your own work in the Wool- 
hope Club you will most easily recall to mind instances in which you have been 
rewarded by the sudden discovery of specimens which were thought to be obsolete, 
and never likely to re-occur. Sowerby in his excellent work, figured Thelephora 
Sowerbei, Berk., and yet since his time until you found it there was no one 
fortunate enough to see a living British plant of it since the days of Sowerby. 
Without a doubt fungi do appear, then disappear for a time to re-appear once 
more. The reasons for these fluctuations are various. They may be caused 
partly by changes in the seasons, some being much more favourable than others 
for certain specialities, This may arise from want of workers among the fungi, or 
be caused from deficient records as to habitats. In some cases they may have 
been seen, but passed by from want of recognition. Of one thing I think we may 
be tolerably certain, that the system of the Almighty is not to create them, then 
to destroy them that they may be created afresh within a few years. The germ 
exists in the nycelum, or the spore, and will, according to the law which guides 
its reproduction, spring up again, to eladden ourselves, perhaps, and future 
students, 
