Section D. 
BIOLOGY. 
1.— PESTIFEROUS FUNGT, AND THEIR MODES OF ATTACK. 
By Dr. M. C. COOKE , M.A. 
Investigation of the vegetable features of any new country 
naturally commences with the study and determination of the most 
prominent objects, such as the trees, shrubs, and the most common or 
conspicuous of herbaceous plants; and it is not until these have been 
comparatively exhausted that the more humble and inconspicuous 
crvptogamia receive any systematic attention. These obscure organisms 
are, nevertheless, capable of revenging themselves for such neglect, 
sooner or later, by compelling cultivators of useful or ornamental 
phanerogams to recognise their power of inflicting injury, and 
compelling such cultivators to inquire into the character, mode of life, 
and reproduction of those parasites which they had been disposed to 
pass over in silence and contempt. Of all the lower cryptogamia the 
fungi are pre-eminent for their destructive tendencies, and until recent 
times they were the least known and understood. It is now recognised 
that wherever plants are cultivated on a large scale, for pleasure or 
profit, such culture will have to be conducted in the face of a strong 
opposition from parasitic fungi, increasing in number and in power with 
the progress of cultivation. Consequently the study and investigation 
of fungi is no longer a dilettante amusement, but becomes a stern 
necessity. 
There are three principal directions in which the study of fungi 
may he pursued. Firstly, the larger fleshy fungi only may occupy the 
attention, and these with the object of ascertaining their merits or 
demerits as articles of food, the possibilities of submitting them to culti- 
vation, or of ascertaining the conditions under which they are produced. 
This is the purely gastronomic interest, and its end is the production 
of pretty pictures and the elaboration of savoury dishes. Secondly, 
the investigation may be an absolutely scientific one, upon purely 
scientific lines, and merely for systematic purposes. Its great objects 
are the minute distinctions between one species and another, their 
affinities and their differences, the elaboration of schemes of classifica- 
tion. and the indefinite multiplication of names and sections. This is 
chiefly a mechanical interest, and its aim the production, upon paper, 
of the most formidable array of Latin names in some novel sequence 
or combination. Verily ! they have their reward. Thirdly, there is 
the biological method, in which the external form and development is 
but one aspect, whilst names and affinities are hut helpers, and not 
the objects of investigation. In this process the whole of the lite- 
history of the parasite has to be ascertained as far as possible, all its 
means of reproduction, and whatever promotes or hinders its career or 
