CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Morphology and cytology of fungi 
DeBary’s great treatise, indispensable as it still is to the working mycolo- 
gist, has become in many respects so obsolete as to be not only unsatisfactory 
but even misleading in the hands of less advanced students of the fungi, and a 
modern, authoritative work in the English language, with the same compre- 
hensive scope, is greatly to be desired. The volume by Dame GWyYNNE- 
VavuGHAN' in large measure meets this need, so far as the groups of which it 
treats are concerned. Presumably another volume in the same series is forth- 
coming, which will complete the account. 
The first part of the book, occupying thirty-four pages, is devoted to 
general introductory matter, applicable to the fungi as a whole. It contains 
the last-named term used in a narrowly restrictive sense to apply only to 
lichens and mycorhizas. The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed 
shee by subdivisions of the particular groups specified in the title. 
n the matter of systematic treatment the author has been commendably 
Ba EA: for the most part, but she has not hesitated to make radical 
rearrangement of the currently accepted systems where the need has existed. 
This is strikingly shown in the treatment of the Ascomycetes. The ‘great 
”” Ascomycetes is divided into three “groups” (why not classes and 
Plectascales. The latter order is expanded to include everything from the 
Endomycetaceae and the yeasts to the Terfeziaceae. The result is an arrange- 
ment simpler and more usable than that of ENGLER, which at the same time 
does no violence to our present admittedly very imperfect knowledge of the 
relationships among these primitive forms. Furthermore, it is a pleasure 
to see in a modern book a reversion to the earlier conception of the Archimycetes, 
the Oomycetes, and the Zygomycetes as three coordinate groups of the Phyco- 
mycetes, rather than an adherence to the more recent but less logical practice 
of placing all the lower Phycomycetes in the Oomycetes 
t GWYNNE-VAUGHAN, Dame HELEN, Fungi. Ascomycetes, Ustilaginales, Uredi- 
nales. Cambridge Botanical Handbooks. pp. xi+232. figs. 196. Cambridge. 1922. 
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