The Earlier Study of Fungi in Britain. David Paul. loi 



It could not have been otherwise, and Fries would have been 

 the first to acknowledge his indebtedness to those who went 

 before him. These considerations must not however blind us 

 to the fact that in botanical classification and description he 

 occupies a foremost place. It is mainly due to him that 

 Mycology has so many ardent students in this country as it 

 has to-day. 



Let us pass now to Berkeley. Like so many other British 

 Mycologists he was a clergyman, and performed the duties of 

 two country charges in succession while he was carrying on 

 his scientific work. His eminence as a Mycologist is well known. 

 As far back as 1836 his reputation in that branch of Botany 

 was so well established that Sir William Hooker entrusted him 

 with the preparation of the volume on Fungi which completed 

 Sir James E. Smith's English Flora. Elias Fries held him in the 

 highest estimation, and regarded him as the man qualified 

 above all others to draw up a synopsis of the Extra-European 

 Hymenomycetes. As regards British Fungi he has been styled 

 the virtual founder of our Mycology. He possessed Fries' 

 enthusiasm, his accuracy, his powei of patient observation, 

 his wide outlook over the field of Botany, and his instinct in the 

 detection of affinities and differences. During a long life he 

 maintained his high place in Botany. No doubt he was a 

 Taxonomist much more than a Morphologist, but that was in 

 the natural order of things. Classification of plants must 

 precede the minute investigation of their structure, and the 

 first claim which Fungi made on a botanist in the third decade 

 of last century was classification. We have dealt with some 

 of the attempts to arrange the larger fungi that had already 

 been made ; let us look at Berkeley's contribution. 



The first volume of Fries' Sy sterna Mycologicum appeared in 

 182 1, fifteen years before Berkeley's volume on Fungi contained 

 in Smith's English Flora. It embraced the Hymenomycetes. 

 On comparing the classification of these in the two books we 

 find that they are practically the same ; Berkeley simply adopted 

 Fries' classification. Subsequently Fries improved that arrange- 

 ment, adding two new genera, Hygrophorus and Marasmius, 

 whose members had previously been included in one or other 

 of the subgenera of Agaricus, and Berkeley in his "Outlines" 

 adopted that improvement, as well as the addition of the 

 genus Lentinus. There is no originality then in Berkeley's 

 work so far as the classification of these higher Fungi is con- 

 cerned. His merit as a British Mycologist lies in this, that he 

 immediately recognised the value of Fries' divisions, and 

 adopted them for the benefit of science in his own country. 

 It is not indeed a perfect classification, for it is partly natural 



