HISTORY OF LSCHENOLOGY. 



19 



recent period, — speculation to a great extent took the place 

 of fact ; there was profitless straining after analogies which 

 did not really exist, — a bending of fact to the subservience 

 of theory. Observations were imperfectly made, or were 

 coloured and perverted by the dominant idea. Fruitless 

 discussions were entered into on the reproductive functions, 

 based on erroneous or imperfect data : each author built 

 up a new classification and devised a new nomenclature. As 

 a necessary consequence, genera and species have been in a 

 constant state of transition, both as regards name and position 

 in classification. Some Lichenologists, whose dominant ten- 

 dency has been the splitting up of species, and the devising 

 of new names, have been constantly creating new subdivi- 

 sions of the family, new genera, new species, and new va- 

 rieties, thus adding materially to the complexity of nomen- 

 clature and classification ; others, whose minds led them to 

 generalize, have, on the other hand, been as actively em- 

 ployed in fusing together or combining certain genera and 

 destroying others, thus contributing towards a simplification 

 of the natural history of the Lichens. Such a condition 

 of Lichenology could not fail to render its study both diffi- 

 cult and repulsive to the general student of natural science ; 

 — hence one great cause, undoubtedly, of the obscurity in 



