20 INTRODUCTION TO CRYPTOGAMIC BOTANY. 



a great measure diverted from their original pursuits by such 

 a notion. I am convinced, however, that it is altogether 

 groundless ; few names are more honoured than those of 

 Hedwig, Persoon,* and Agardh, and it would be easy to point 

 out, if it were not invidious, numerous names which hold a 

 primal rank amongst botanists exclusively on account of inves- 

 tigation in Cryptogamic Botany; added to which, some of the 

 more honoured Phsenogamists owe quite as large a portion of 

 their fame to their cryptogamic observations as to those in the 

 higher classes of vegetables. Numerous, for example, as the 

 services of Sir W. J. Hooker have been amongst Phsenogams, 

 and it is difficult to appreciate them at their full value, there 

 can be no doubt that his reputation as a botanist will rest 

 quite as much upon his British Jungermannice and Musci 

 Exotici,-\ as any of his other very numerous publications, not 

 to mention his direct services to science and commerce in his 

 unparalleled exertions at Kew. That a great number of crjrp- 

 togamic botanists should be held in little esteem, by reason of 

 confined views and uninstructed minds, is no more surprising 

 than that there should be hosts of phaenogamic botanists 

 whose names are scarcely known, except to those who have 

 the misery of being forced to consult their works, which 

 might, indeed, with incalculable advantage to science, be 

 overlooked altogether; and amongst such must inevitably be 

 reckoned numerous writers of the present century, who are 

 daily adding bad or spurious species to the overwhelming 

 mass of ill-defined matter already existing ; who not only 

 have no enlarged views of the science they profess, but are at 

 the same time destitute of the will to investigate, for they are 

 not without the gift of diligence, the main object being to 

 make a fair show in the flesh by the multitude of species 



* Persoon's fair title to a place amongst the Principes rests upon his 

 Synopsis Fungorum, the first successful attempt after the rise of the 

 Linnean nomenclature to arrange the species of Fungi in a systematic 

 form. He was the first describer, indeed, of a multitude of species, but 

 his fame does not rest on this part of his labours, and his latest work 

 scarcely bears out the reputation derived from the Synopsis. 



t Of all his works, this is perhaps the most beautiful. The figures 

 have scarcely been surpassed in truth and elegance. 



