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that many will be common, and that after all expense is entailed on others which 
it is not fair to incur. Possibly it is this which has induced some of our best 
workers to bracket their names in pairs. Messrs. Berkeley and Broome, Messrs. 
Phillips and Plowright, Messrs. Cooke and Peck. The difficulty to me seems to 
be in attaining just that amount of study and friendship which will give and get 
from another ,instruction without the sensation of intrusion. The finding of 
specimens to a beginner is very very easy, he cannot help obtaining them, fungi 
being almost ubiquitous, but the naming of them is a harder matter by far. Give 
a young student a Helminthosporium Smithu (B and Br)—a Claspterisporiwm 
Vermiculatum (Cooke) and he must want help, so he will to distinguish a Clavaria 
and Geoglossum at first sight. See how even the advanced mycologists, Mr. 
Worthington G. Smith and Dr. De Bary have differed abont Peronospora and 
Pythium, the former to all our English minds I suppose taking the victor’s crown. 
May all our rivalries in science go on as that seems to have done so satisfactorily, 
and may as I believe to be the case, an anxious desire always be shown to get at the 
real settlement of the case by solid experience, with what we do not always get in 
religion and politics, namely mutual forbearance and unbounded charity. 
But whilst speaking about contrasts in fungi, we must not forget that some 
of the plants are not difficult for a beginner to decide, at all events as to the genus 
to which they belong. Who that ever saw a Pestalozzia with its beautiful crest 
would fail to remember the aristate head thereof, and assign to it its proper place? 
Who that ever saw a Puccinia would give it a spot which generically did not belong 
to it, unless perhaps he had been reading that splendid work ‘‘ The Scottish 
Cryptogamic Flora,” and turned to Puccinia Fabe, about which Dr. Greville 
strangely in error says, ‘‘ This is the only species I have observed in this country 
with unilocular sporidia.” The fact is they are not Puccinia at all which has 
uniseptate spores, but true Uromzyces. I have searched most diligently and en- 
quired very anxiously at home and abroad, and never could hear of a Puccinia on 
the Windsor Bean. 
There is another grievous difficulty which besets us all, but more especially 
those who are not rich, and very very few working fungologists are rich, certainly 
not when they begin the study. I refer to the absence of really standard works 
with reliable plates or figures drawn to life when large to the eye, to scale when 
microscopic. It has become a matter of difficulty to hear of any one possessing 
the works of Sowerby, Corda, Bolton, and others, and if a second-hand copy be 
in the market its price is gigantic, and the demand for it equal to its price. To sit 
down and copy by drawing or tracing these books, if they are to be obtained by 
borrowing, implies an employment of time which is very tedious and might be 
better occupied. If the original plates of these authors be in existence (who 
knows where they are?), could not some copies of them be made afresh? But 
then comes the question of return as a cash investment. The cryptogamic publi- 
cation of books is at best uncertain. To publish old books would not pay, because 
older students here and on the continent may have them. Very young beginners 
