ON COMMENCING THE STUDY OF FUNGI. 249 



ON COMMENCING THE STUDY OF FUNGI.* 



BY DR. M. C. COOKE, M.A. 



It is contrary to my wishes that I should come here for the first 

 time with an apology in my mouth ; but so the fates have decreed. If 

 you are disappointed, I shall be none the less so, that I am incom- 

 petent to the duty laid upon me. Congratulating you on having 

 commenced this year a most interesting study, I must warn you that 

 it is not an easy one. If any of you would go further than you have 

 gone to day, it must be by dint of work. There is no royal road to a 

 knowledge of fungi. After a quarter of a century of too close applica- 

 tion, as the sequel has proved, I am still but a learner. I am still 

 fain to confess how much there is I do not know. 



Out of more than 3,000 British fungi, perhaps near 4,000 there, 

 ax*e 1,000 or more which may be collected and studied without the 

 microscope, by the aid only of a simple pocket leus. This group 

 is perhaps the best known as Fungi. Some there are who know no 

 other. They are the mushroom and toadstool kind, and those hard 

 woody excrescences which are not uncommon on rotting trees. These 

 are called by fungus hunters, Hymenomycetes, because the spore- 

 bearing surface forms a distinct exposed part of the fungus, as for 

 instance the gills of a mushroom or the tubes of a polypore. 



I need not enter upon either the minute anatomy or the classin ca- 

 tion of these higher fungi, but simply call to your mind that the 

 spores, or analogues of seed, which they all produce are borne on the 

 tips of clavate basidia, or fruit-stalks, which are surmounted by two 

 or four little spicules, each of which carries a spore. If we take a 

 mushroom, or a fungus of the same genus, in our hands, and examine 

 it, we shall observe that the cap or pileus has on its under surface a 

 number of radiating plates or gills, the whole surface of which is 

 covered with the basidia I have just spoken of, closely packed 

 together, and bearing on the spicules at the tips the spores of the 

 fungus. 



These spores differ in colour in different species, and the species 

 are grouped together according to the colour of their spores. The 

 Agarics with white spores equal in number all the rest with coloured 

 spores. In some they are roseate, in others brown, in others purple, 

 in others black. In determining a fungus, the first thing to ascertain is 

 the colour of the spores. To facilitate this it is better to cut off the 

 stalk and place the fungus, gills downwards, on dull black paper, and 

 allow it to remain all night. During this time the spores will be 

 thrown down upon the paper, and their colour can be determined. If 

 the operator is also a microscopist, he may examine some of these 

 spores in a drop of water, and discover their form and size, as well as 

 their colour. 



* Presented to the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society 

 at the Fungus Foray. October 8tb. 



