389 



GENERA AND SPECIES IN FUNGI. 



M. C. COOKE, LL.D., M.A., A.L.S., V.M.H. etc. 



Some forty or fifty years ago there was a great outcry amongst 

 botanists of heresy in the camp, and two factions raged against 

 each other. These came to be called ' splitters ' and * lumpers/ 

 The former indulged in an inordinate increase in the number 

 of species in flowering plants — the latter in the delimitation of 

 species to the old lines. The chiefs in these camps were, for 

 the * splitters ' (to a large extent, though not to the full of the 

 fanatics) Professor C. C. Babington, and for the * lumpers ' 

 Dr. Joseph D. Hooker and George Bentham. If I remember 

 rightly, the common Water Ranunculus was proposed to be 

 divided into some ten or a dozen species, and an inconspicuous 

 Crucifer into about sixteen species. In France, especially, 

 the splitters went mad in their scheme of reform. Dr. Hooker, 

 on his return from the Sikkim Himalayas, laughed at this 

 fanaticism, and recommended the advocates to take a few 

 journeys abroad, and examine the floras of other countries, 

 and not attempt to legislate on the strength of their knowledge 

 of local floras, and then they would discover how one species 

 dissolved into another, and how absurd it was to characterize 

 individuals, and convert them into species. 



This is the head and front of my offending, that I recognize 

 genera and species as purely artificial groups, constituted by 

 human authorities for the purposes of classification, but that 

 really there are no such things in nature ; and in justification 

 of this view, I affirm that it may be discovered that in all 

 genera there are abnormal forms, or intermediate links which 

 do not belong strictly to any genus, but are intermediate, or 

 ^ missing links ' which join one genus to another, and combine 

 them into one continuous harmonious whole, gliding the one 

 into the other without a gap between, and thus the whole scheme 

 of vegetation is a unity — or, as Dr. Christopher Dresser has 

 intimated, is ' Unity in Variety.' 



In Lindley's ' Vegetable Kingdom,' in nearly every natural 

 order, a scheme of affinity is given as in MalvacecB — 



Geraniaceae 

 Sterculiacece — Ma/i^ac^^g — Byttneriaceae 

 Chlaenaceae 



showing how Malvaceae is linked with four other natural orders. 

 And the same process might be adopted for all Genera and, 



1909 Nov. I. 



