320 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FUNGI 



of some still earlier writers than we have mentioned. Hum- 

 boldt, for instance, three-quarters of a century ago wrote : " If 

 we estimate the whole number of the Cryptogamia hitherto 

 described at 19,000 species, as has been done by Dr. Klotsch, 

 a naturalist possessing a profound acquaintance with the agamic 

 plants, we shall have for the Fungi 8000 (of which the 

 Agarics constitute the eighth part)." It is a remarkable co- 

 incidence that in Saccardo's enumeration the Agarics still 

 constitute the eighth part of the whole. As to the Hymeno- 

 mycetes, which include the Agarics, Fries, in his Hymenomycetes 

 Uuropaei, gives a total number of species for the whole of 

 Europe as 2778. Before the publication of the Sylloge, we 

 remarked on this fact : " It may fairly be concluded that the 

 total number. of species of the Hymenomycetes is not less than 

 5000." Subsequently the Sylloge extended that number to 

 9634, the proportion of which that are confined to Europe we 

 have not ascertained, but it is considerably beyond that 

 enumerated by Fries. The total of species of Hymenomycetal 

 Fungi now known reaches to nearly one-fourth of the total 

 of described species of Fungi. If we analyse these results still 

 further, we find that of the Hymenomycetes not less than 5245 

 belong to the Agaricini, or gill-bearing series, and 2200 to the 

 Polyporei, or pore-bearing series, leaving only rather more than 

 2000, or about equal to the whole of the Polyporei, for the 

 remainder of the Hymenomycetes, i.e. the Hydnei, Thelephorei, 

 Clavariei, and the Tremellini. 



The next group of importance, as to number, is that of the 

 Pyrenomycetes, formerly termed the Sphaeriaceae, in which the 

 spores are contained in asci and enclosed in a perithecium. 

 Placing the total at 10,500, we see at once that it is more 

 numerous in species than the whole of the Hymenomycetes, 

 and more than one-fourth the total of all known Fungi. It 

 must be remembered that the largest perithecium known is 

 not much larger than a grain of mustard seed, or, at any rate, 

 not so large as the seed of a vetch, although in some compound 

 species, in which some hundreds of perithecia are collected 

 in a single stroma, that stroma may attain the size of a 

 man's fist. Hitherto the number of British species has always 

 been less than the total of British Hymenomycetes, perhaps 



