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To their unseen causation ai'e due most of those changes wliich affect organic life. 

 Under their influence organic tissues alter their form of vitality. 



What is called decay is in truth but a process to other forms of life, some- 

 times beneficial to man in the production of wholesome food, and more often 

 injurious by causing disease and pestilence. 



It is ten years since our Club commenced the study of Agarics, and that 

 series of discussions and papers began which have since given so much renown to 

 it. The subject was scarcely introduced when in the following year prizes for 

 collections of funguses were for the first time given at South Kensington, and 

 Dr. Bull took the chief prize for Herefordshire. 



In the autumn of 18G8 the first fungus foray was made to Holme Lacy, 

 under the superintendence of our staunch friends, Messrs. Lees and Worthington 

 Smith. These forays have gradually grown in interest, increasing numbers join 

 them, and an abundant supply of papers notifying new facts and discoveries, are 

 annually read. 



Many of the most distinguished mycologists have done us the honour of 

 attending them. The Club will be proud to mention the names of Berkeley, 

 Broome, Cooke, Currey, I'lowright, Phillips, Kenuie, Vize, Houghton, Percival, 

 Cornu, De-Seynes, and several others, who have again and again been present at 

 our forays. 



The active interest of our members in the study of funguses was at once ex- 

 cited by calling attention to the edible kinds. It was shown that a large amount of 

 vegetable matter containing nitrogen, hitherto allowed to waste year after year, 

 might be utilised as food. Experience has shown, however, that an idea so 

 philanthropic, is not in England practically feasible. Few species of Agaric are 

 edible, more are tasteless or disagreeable, and some that are poisonous are 

 unfortunately too common. 



The comparative scarcity of uncultivated land in this country, and the un- 

 certain, and, as it were capricious growtli of Agarics, put quite out of the question 

 any reliance on them as a source of food for tlie people, the more especially as 

 other food is happily so abundant. It still remains, however, for the scientific 

 epicure to distinguish and profit by them, as he assuredly may do, and gather from 

 them a varied and delicious relish. 



The study of Mycology deserves all the ardour with which it has been re- 

 cently followed; to it we owe the knowledge of those destructive agents the 

 various kinds of moulds, smuts, rusts, &c., that are called blight. The term 

 blight is too indefinite. It is indiscriminately applied to funguses, to insects, 

 and to diseases caused in the young and tender parts of plants by sudden alter- 

 ations in the temperature, or amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Most living 

 plants and animals are at times more or less infested with funguses, which are 

 nourished at their expense, to very often the eventual destruction of both. Some 



