CHAPTER II : THE RELATION OF FUNGI 

 TO OTHER PLANTS 



A CLASSIFICATION or Orderly arrangement of material collected 

 for study is indispensable to true pleasure and profit. The nature 

 student must classify both his specimens and the knowledge he 



may obtain about them ; for, as Spen- 

 cer has said, "When a man's knowl- 

 edge is not in order, the more of it 

 he has the greater will be his confu- 

 sion of thought." As he compares his 

 specimens he sees interesting grada- 

 tions of resemblance, and becomes fas- 

 cinated with the pleasure of tracing 

 their relationships and the gradual evo- 

 lution of higher forms from lower. 



Every lover of nature who haunts 

 the fields and woods acquires a rich 

 store of facts about plant life, and with- 

 out, perhaps, recognising that he does 

 so, distinguishes two great groups of plants — those which have 

 attractive flowers, and those which have no flowers at all. His 

 flowerless plants bear no seeds, but quan- 

 tities of fine, dust-like particles which rise 

 in the air as he brushes his stick over their 

 green leaves. As the powers of observa- 

 tion develop, he distinguishes the ferns 

 and Christmas greens among flowerless 

 plants, and perhaps soon recognises that 

 the soft green moss bank, too, is composed of small plants, 

 and that the green mats, the liverworts, on stones and moist 

 banks and logs, are plants also. His only reason, perhaps, for 

 calling them plants is that they grow and are green. He may 



S 



Corollas and honey, at- 

 tractive to insects 



Ingenious stamens 



