The Earlier Study of Fungi in Britain. David Paul. 103 



fungi in this country his name need not perhaps have been 

 mentioned at all, and he might have been properly regarded 

 as the inaugurator of the newer era of Mycology. But in that 

 case the story of earlier progress would not have been rounded 

 off, and the contrast between the earlier and later results of 

 the study of the subject would not have appeared. When we 

 compare him with those who went before him, we must set his 

 work parallel with theirs, and mark how far he surpassed them 

 on their own lines, as in the number of species he added to the 

 British Fungus Flora and in the admirable way in which he 

 dealt with the already recognised species both in description 

 and classification. I have not sought to characterise his work 

 among the lower minute fungi, because that is outside the 

 f^eld of the earlier study, nor to estimate the value of his 

 Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany, published in 1857, ^^ which 

 he treated the relations to one another of the different Families 

 of Cryptogams, though it is a work of the highest merit, and 

 was the first comprehensive work on the subject ever prbduced, 

 nor have I done more than allude to his unrivalled knowledge 

 of exotic fungi, though it was unequalled in his day, and is 

 witnessed to by the fact that Sir W. J. Hooker entrusted him 

 with the description and classification of all the fungi sent to 

 Kew from abroad, and notably with those collected by Darwin 

 during the voyage of the Beagle. It does not enter into the 

 scope of this paper to deal with Berkeley's varied and valuable 

 contributions to British Mycology generally, it only falls within 

 its range to contrast the results of his study of the larger and 

 more conspicuous fungi with those of his predecessors, regarding 

 him as being, at least in the first part of his life, the last of the 

 earlier students of the science. 



We have thus travelled down the road of mycological study, 

 from the dark age of the Herbals when classification was practi- 

 cally non-existent, and when corals and sponges were included 

 among Fungi, onwards through successive gropings after a 

 systematic arrangement, and through gradually increasing 

 knowledge of the plants themselves, down to the time when 

 Berkeley in his first published work of importance, but especially 

 in his "Outlines," settled for British mycologists the system 

 of classification of the higher Fungi which still, after the lapse 

 of fifty-eight years, with slight alteration holds the field. 

 I would end with the words of the great Swede in his preface 

 to his Monographia Hymenomycetum: "To botanists who live 

 in the country I commend the study of these fungi as a perennial 

 fountain of pleasure and of admiration of the Wisdom which 

 directs the whole of nature." 



