150 THE STUDY OF FUNGI. 
the disease. This spore, unlike the others, requires to be fertilised, an 
office which is performed by a smaller body which grows near it on 
the mycelium. After their union the oospore is capable of withstanding 
the cold, and awaits its time to grow; it may, for all we know, live for 
years, until it finds suitable conditions for growth. As yet there has not 
appeared anything to destroy it, and certainly the difficulty of its destruc- 
tion must be enormous. Wet seasons and wet places promote its growth 
more than dry ones. The same ground should not be used for successive 
years for the growth of the potato. The haulm and eyery root and 
rootlet should be burned. Those varieties of potato whick are least 
affected by the disease, such as the very earliest sorts, should be 
encouraged, so should the red kinds of winter potato rather than the 
white. It is not as though the common kind of potato only were 
attacked. Hleven of the Solanacex, the family to which the potato 
belongs, are recorded as having developed the disease, so has Arthoceris 
viscosa. 
In conclusion, let me now give you some idea as to the division of 
the fungi. The fungi are arranged under two divisions: 1st, the Sporifera, 
in which the spores are naked; 2nd, the Sporidiifera, in which the spores 
are in sacs or asci. The first division is subdivided into four families, the 
second into two. In all these families the name is derived from the 
predominance of some feature in each. 
Hymenomycetes, from Gr. humén, a membrane, and mukés, a mush- 
room ; the fruit being formed on a membrane, which is either naked from 
the first or soon becomes so, if originally enclosed in a volva. 
Gasteromycetes, from gaster, a belly, where the fruit is produced in a 
closed receptacle. 
Coniomycetes, from konis, dust; the dust-like spores forming the 
chief character. 
Hyphomycetes, from huphé, a woven mass of threads. 
Physomycetes, from phusa, a vesicle or bladder, where the fruit 
arises from the tip of a thread, penetrating into the vesicle which forms 
a covering for the fruit. ‘ 
Ascomycetes, from ascos, a sac, where the fruit is formed within asci. 
The families are subdivided into thirty-one orders, the orders into 
368 genera up to the publication of Dr. Cooke’s ‘‘ Handbook of British 
Fungi,” and the species up to that time (1871) amounted to 2,809. But 
within the the last few years a great number of species has been 
recorded as new to Great Britain, and this number does not now represent 
by hundreds the fungi that are known as British. 
In concluding my paper, it must not be thought that I have 
exhausted the subject. Nota word has been said about the luminosity 
of fungi, their ubiquity, and the advantage gained in studying them from 
the fact that they are to be found every day in the year, as compared 
with flowering plants which can only be obtained during a limited season. 
Not a word has been said about their geographical distribution, and very 
little about their hybernation, and their various modes of fructification. 
These points may be left for a future time. 
bi ole 
