146 THE STUDY OF FUNGI. 
house, there you are certain to find specimens. Is your house damp? 
The wall-paper will supply you with an object to examine, possibly three, 
four, or more, from the same strip of paper. The linen hanging up in 
your cupboard will supply you, if not moved occasionally. Keep your 
cheese until it becomes decayed, there will be something to admire in it. 
Put your hazel nuts away, then see in course of time the beautiful pink 
that grows upon them. Look at your apples, in those wart-like spots you 
have fungi again. The diseased house-fly on the windows will furnish 
specimens, and the cellar is a most prolific spot. But leave home, and go 
for a walk: the leaves of the trees, the bark, the branches stripped of 
their bark, will all yield supplies. Go to the lanes, the hedges, the 
ditches, the inside of a wood, still better the edge of it. Look at the 
gate-posts, the stiles, the grass under your feet, the corn-field, the 
decaying sticks, the utterly rotten wood; all these positively invite us at 
some period or other to study the fungi. 
But all is not so smooth as you may perhaps suppose from what you 
have hitherto heard; there are difficulties to be overcome, severe 
difficulties, and it is only fair that both sides of the question should be 
placed before you. Let us seethen some of the troubles connected with 
mycology. Pre-eminently stands the want of books with plates of any 
excellence. There are sofew men who study this special department of 
botany that the inclination to publish dwindles away from want of 
support. Anyone who attempts it may feel pretty sure that he will not 
be repaid for his trouble. Also, since few copies of any work that may be 
published are produced, their value in a number of years becomes 
proportioned to their rarity. Corda’s ‘‘Icones Fungorum,” by no means 
costly at first, is now worth £28. Sowerby’s ‘‘ English Fungi” seems to 
be almost unobtainable. Still, if any one really cares to examine the 
fungi, the want of books need not deter him; he can make his own 
drawings, and he can obtain a copy of Dr. Cooke’s ‘‘ Handbook of Fungi,” 
a work which embraces the information contained in Mr. Berkeley’s 
‘‘Qutlines of Fungology,”’ and in those yaluable papers of Messrs. 
Berkeley and Broome scattered here and there in the ‘Ann. and 
Mag. of Natural History.” He can also cope with the times, and the 
most recent ones too, by subscribing to that record of cryptogamic botany 
issued every quarter called ‘‘ Grevillea.” 
Another difficulty is that of assigning the correct name to a plant. 
Some fungi are in outward appearance very much like others, the orthodox 
place of which is very remote from theirs. In fact so difficult is it to say 
decidedly what a plant is without microscopic help that the higher 
authorities rarely venture to name anything off at once, or, if they do, it 
is with the understanding that a critical examination shall be made of it 
when opportunity offers. Of this we may be sure, that study will unfold 
the name and place of many a plant which perhaps is unknown for a long 
time, and of another thing we may be more certain still, that, when it is 
known that aman really does his best to ascertain his plants, there is 
such a feeling among the lovers of mycology that every one is ready to 
help his friend, and give all the assistance in his power. 
