98 Transactions British Mycological Society. 



its preface may be quoted. "The plants," he says, "which 

 now compose the order Fungi were formerly supposed to be 

 of equivocal generation, the sport of nature, the effect of putre- 

 faction or the brood of chance, but that they owe their original 

 to the seeds of a parent plant is now well known, having been 

 proved by, inter alios, the ingenious Hedwig, who in a work 

 entitled Historia generationis et fructificationis Plantarum 

 Cryptogamicarimi. published in quarto at Petropolis in 1784, 

 has by means of the microscope proved beyond dispute the 

 existence of stamen and style, or of male and female organs 

 in these, as perfect and regular and effective in the production 

 of proper seeds as in any other vegetable where they are more 

 obvious to the sight." The passage is of interest, not as being 

 a correct statement of the method of the reproduction of fungi, 

 but as an attempt to dissipate the crude ideas that formerly 

 prevailed, and to provide a definite place for fungi within the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



The popular interest in Botan}^ which was growing in the 

 last half of the eighteenth century is evidenced by the number 

 of Floras that it produced. Hill's Flora Britannica appeared 

 in 1760, Hudson's Flora Anglica in 1762, Martyn's Plantae 

 Cantahrigienses in 1763, Withering's Botanical Arrangement in 

 1776, Lightfoot's Flora Scotica in 1777, Relhan's Flora Canta- 

 brigiensis in 1785, Sibthorp's Flora Oxoniensis in 1794, 

 Dickson's Catalogjis in 1795, and Hull's British Flora in 1799. 

 It was the era of Floras. No doubt interest mainly centred 

 in Flowering Plants, but it was gradually spreading to Crypto- 

 gams also. Of these Fungi were the last to be brought into 

 the current, and the progress in the century, since Ray's 

 Synopsis appeared in 1690, was not all that might have been 

 expected, even in the case of the larger Fungi that can be 

 examined with such ordinary lenses as were then in use. To 

 deal in detail with all these Floras would occupy much time, 

 and is unnecessary for our purpose, but the appearance of 

 Withering's Arrangement of British Plants is worth a short 

 notice. It is a work for which I have an affection, as it is the 

 only botanical book I had access to when I was a boy. 



Withering was born in 1741 at Wellington and was educated 

 at the University of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of 

 M.D. in 1766, afterwards practising at Stafford and at Birming- 

 ham. In 1776 he published his Arrangement of British Plants 

 which reached its third edition in 1796, three years before 

 his death. It is in four volumes, the last volume being 

 devoted to crvptogamic plants. He was not a distinguished 

 botanist, and he seems to have taken little or no share in the 

 discussion of the plant problems that then occupied the attention 



