337 
THE MODERN TENDENCY OF MYCOLOGICAL STUDY. 
AN ADDRESS 
DELIVERED AT THE YORKSHIRE FUNGUS FORAY OF 1899, 
GEORGE MASSEE, F.L.S., 
Royal Herbarium, Kew. 
THE morphological method of research, rendered possible by 
the perfection of the microscope, combined with the insight 
derived from pure cultures, initiated by DeBary, have within the 
past twenty-five years completely revolutionised the study of 
Fungi. Old schemes of classification have been rathlessly— 
perhaps too precipitately—swept away and new arrangements 
substituted. Those who first commenced the study of Fungi 
under the new dispensation indicated above have no qualms of 
conscience; on the other hand, those who entered the field 
under the old regime, and who consequently absorbed the 
Friesian scheme of classification so thoroughly that it became ~ 
an integral part of their being, perhaps naturally resent all 
innovations, and depending on their temperament and stock of 
knowledge, challenge such departures from the old love on 
every possible occasion, Nevertheless, all who desire to know 
more about Fungi than is conveyed by a bald name—and such 
as do not are not mycologists in any sense of the term—must 
of necessity admit that all additions to our knowledge have 
been made by those who have utilised both modes of research, 
and I can only suggest that if still greater pleasure is to be 
gained from the study, it can only be secured by accepting the 
inevitable, which means the revelations made and to be made 
by morphological and culture methods, as compared with 
deductions derived from naked-eye or pocket-lens observations. 
That modern ideas are being accepted by all classes of 
mycologists is proved by the fact that heteraecism is generally 
accepted ; the old supposed genera Uredo, d:cidium, etc., have 
gone for ever, their departure being in several instances precipi- 
tated by the researches of one the ‘loss of whom from our midst 
‘we all deplore 
In che: Hy fabnomycetes, a group perhaps the least disturbed 
by modern research, the microscope has proved of value in the 
discrimination of species; having in several instances shown 
that forms considered as entities by the old authors include 
more than one species universally acknowledged by systematists 
at the present day, as in the well-known instances of Agaricus 
rimosus Fries, and Clavarta tnequalts F1. Dan., each of which 
November 1899. x 
