92 Transactions British Mycological Society. 



in no sense a scientific work, and it is not even the work of an 

 original observer ; Pliny was only a man of astonishing industry 

 who collected his material from all available sources, and set 

 it down in ver}^ confused form. We have to thank him, 

 however, for his diligence in gathering together a storehouse of 

 information on the ancient world and its knowledge of plants, 

 which otherwise we should have known nothing of. These 

 earliest writers while they mention various Fungi seem to regard 

 them as being so well known as to require no exact description, 

 and it is, except in a few cases, impossible to identify them 

 satisfactorily. They looked at them almost entirely from the 

 gastronomic point of view, and the true study of Fungi cannot 

 be said to have -then begun. They did not contribute any 

 helpful suggestions to the earliest observers of fungi in Britain. 



IMany centuries elapsed before e\en the roughest foundation 

 of the science of Mycology was laid. All through the Middle 

 Ages plants were studied mainly for their supposed curative 

 properties, and Fungi do not appear to have found a place in 

 the curious prescriptions of the old leeches. It was not till the 

 sixteenth century that they began to be included among plants, 

 or to be dealt with either in this country or abroad alongside 

 of the observed and described Phanerogams. At the opening 

 of that century no book on Botany had been published in 

 Britain, but during its course at least four passed through the 

 press, none of them of much use for our purpose, but all of 

 them of great interest as illustrative of the manner in which 

 what is now a great science was born, and nursed in its infancy. 

 The development of that science is a vast subject, and I propose 

 only to sketch to-night the steps by which our knowledge of 

 Mycology was gradually advanced by our earlier writers. 



In 15 16 the first edition of the Create Herball was published, 

 no author's name being attached to it. It is a very curious 

 book in black letter and is the earliest British book on Plants. 

 It deals mainly with their medicinal qualities, and gives 

 practically no descriptions. To turn over its pages and read 

 here and there affords a good idea of the position of plant 

 study before it had been rescued from the childishness of the 

 Middle Ages. The wTiter evidently draws largely on still 

 earlier books of the same kind published on the Continent. 

 There is one short chapter on Fungi, the only one that we need 

 notice, and it will illustrate the character of the book if I quote 

 the quaint remarks the author makes on them: 



" Fungi ben muscherons. They be cold and moyst in y^ third 

 degre and that is shewed by theyr vyolent moysture. There 

 be twoo maners of them, one maner is deadly and sleeth them 

 that eateth of the, and be called tode stools, and the other 



