2i8 Transactions British Mycological Society. 



philosophy of mycology different in nature from a philosophy 

 of phanerogams — but it would prove the means of evaluating the 

 herbarium in terms of the laboratory and field, the rigid formal- 

 ities of an artificial system in terms of the living organism. 



Finally attention may be drawn to the fact that the sub- 

 stitution of the physiological in lieu of the morphological 

 species concept implies not only a complete re-orientation of 

 mental attitude, but the unqualified acceptance and unceasing 

 application of a new technique; the quantitative method in 

 place of the qualitative method. One's opinion of the latter 

 may perhaps be better expressed by the following quotation 

 from the recent most suggestive and valuable book of Mac- 

 Leod{24), "The systematists, confined in an antiquated routine, 

 are the first victims of their deplorable method. Since the 

 great majority of the existing specific and even generic descrip- 

 tions are superficial and unfinished to such a degree that the 

 exact identification of a specimen is simply impossible, the 

 systematists discover continually and describe under new names 

 so-called new species, which have already been described either 

 once or even several times." "Moreover, the existing descrip- 

 tions are ordinarily very incomplete. Only a few characters 

 are mentioned, according to a sort of conventional scheme, 

 which would possibly have been sufficient (or thereabout) a 

 century ago, when the number of known species was compara- 

 tively small, but which does not answer the needs of modern 

 science." "The almost incredible imperfection of many well- 

 known works on fungi and the deplorable disorder which 

 prevails in this department of descriptive botany," has been 

 illustrated in a very entertaining manner by Lloyd(2i) in his 

 "Myths of Mycology." 



"The aim of the quantitative method in descriptive science 

 is not only to describe exactly the properties of the species and 

 to make an inventory of the forms of life. This is important 

 enough in itself, but there is more. It is difficult to obtain 

 exact data about the development and the anatomy of animals 

 and plants as long as the observed facts are described by means 

 of mere terms. It is still more difficult to discover the origin 

 of species and their phyletic relations without an exact know- 

 ledge of the investigated species. This can only be obtained 

 by comparing their characteristic figures with the figures of 

 other species. The object of the quantitative method is, in 

 general, the exact description of the living objects." 



Recent workers such as Thom(45), Sherbakoff(39) and others 

 have to a certain extent adopted the quantitative method, 

 but have refrained from doing so entirely, attempting to com- 

 bine a quantitative with a qualitative technique. 



