65 



WORTHINGTON G. SMITH AS MYCOLOGIST. 



Hv A. Lorrain Smith, F.L.S. 



Worthington George Smith, F.R.A.I., F.R.S.A. Ireland, 

 F.L.S., the distinguished archaeologist and botanist, died at 

 Dunstable on the 27th October, 1917, at the age of eighty-two. 

 His loss is of particular significance to mycologists. In his 

 study of plants he possessed the imusual advantage of thorough 

 scientific field knowledge, combined with great artistic skill 

 in delineating the living specimens, an advantage of extreme 

 value in dealing with such perishable plants as fungi. 



Smith specialized on fungi from an early date in his career ; 

 he was one of the leading members of the mycological group 

 of the famous Woolhope Club, which did so much to keep 

 alive the studv of mycology in this country after Berkeley's day. 

 Our own members have seen and enjoved the menu cards with 

 their overflow^ing humour which he prepared for the annual 

 fungus feasts at Hereford. In 1898 he was enrolled a mem- 

 ber of the British Mycological Society and in 1903 was unani- 

 mously elected President, but his advancing years and 

 precarious health prevented him from taking any active part 

 in the work of the Society, and, unfortunately, he was unable 

 to preside over the meeting at Whitby in the following year. 



One of his first papers on fungi was published in the Journal 

 of Botany II. p. 215, 1864, and gives his experience of the 

 serious results that followed the eating of a poisonous fungus, 

 Agaricus jeriiUs Pers. In the same Journal there was re- 

 corded, the following year, his discoverv of a new British 

 truffle, Tuber excavatum Vitt. ; and yet another side of the 

 subject was dealt with two years later (Op. cit. v. p. 367, 1867), 

 in an account of the successful artificial culture of Agaricus 

 Loveianus (Volvaria Loveiana), which grows parasitically on 

 species of Clitocybe. Thereafter until nearly the end of his 

 life, followed a long series of papers and notes (some two 

 hundred and fifty and upwards), w^hich appeared in the above 

 journal, the Gardener's Chronicle, Nature, &c. These 

 papers, as we might infer, deal with every aspect of mycology. 



An economic consideration of fungi, possibly suggested 

 from his poisoning experience, was treated in " Mushrooms 

 and Toadstools : how to distinguish easily the differences 

 between edible and poisonous Fungi." The book or pam- 

 phlet was published in 1867 ^"<^ is finely illustrated by two 



