Some Concepts in Mycology. William B. Brierley. 233 



But if one then surveys the available evidence, critically 

 evaluating the phenomena which have been recorded or the 

 interpretations which only too frequently have been set down 

 in their place, one is left with a feeling of utter dismay. 



A hypothesis of little moment, merely a corollary to a well- 

 established theory, we may accept on slight positive evidence, 

 but acceptance of a fundameatal concept of wide and sub- 

 versive applicability is in a totally different category. This 

 must be based on a great mass of critical and sifted evidence, 

 positive, convincing and amply confirmed. 



In the foregoing pages the endeavour has been to shew that 

 the concept of the educability of micro-organisms has not 

 arisen in such evidence, and that beyond high authority and 

 much prestige there is little to favour its retention as a funda- 

 mental concept of microbiology, save the dead weight of 

 convention and inertia. 



In this brief discussion of the "species-concept" and the 

 "concept of educability" in mycology, no attempt has been 

 made to review the literature cognate to these issues, for to 

 have outlined even the principal investigations would have 

 rendered such a preliminary consideration as this wearisome 

 to read and of unwieldy length. All that has been feasible here 

 is merely to indicate certain lines of thought, largely the 

 result of one's own observations but owing much to one's 

 past and present colleagues, which do not appear to coincide 

 with conventional beliefs. 



The present epoch of the science of mycology had its birth 

 about the middle of the nineteenth century in the labours of 

 de Bary, Woronin, Berkeley, Zopf, Brefeld, Nageli and others 

 too numerous to mention, and in the period represented by 

 the great treatises of de Bary and of Zopf the fundamental 

 concepts dominating mycology were elaborated. These hold 

 to-day, and since that time few concepts of major importance 

 have been formulated. And yet the last three decades have 

 seen the birth and development of the experimental attitude 

 and the cultural technique; and in this period there has been 

 accumulated a mass of fact greater in volume than the stores 

 of eighteen centuries. It is a mass of analytic data which we 

 try to interpret according to the concepts and ideas of an earlier 

 time. And still we accumulate unco-ordinated observations 

 and heap up an incoherent literature. In the great scientific 

 renascence of the nineteenth century, mycologists were not 

 content merely with unending analysis, they also synthesised. 

 We use their syntheses to-day. 



The great present need, not only of mycology, but of all 

 biological science, is Synthesis. Let us make bricks and 



