140 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH FUNGI. 
June, 1891. 
photographed and transferred to stone from the author’s own 
drawings. All the 1,200 plates were also coloured as patterns 
by the author, and printed from his patterns, without the 
intervention of any artist unacquainted with the subject, so 
that nothing was omitted which could assist in rendering 
them as fair reproductions as modern chromo-photo-litho¬ 
graphy could produce. 
A special feature is the great care that has been taken 
to prevent the plates in these volumes being spoiled by over- 
colouring, a fault not always absent from some of the best 
predecessors of the present work. 
It is an unfortunate circumstance that high-class 
scientific works are scarcely ever remunerative, and it is 
doubtful if any publisher could have been found to under¬ 
take the risk of such a book as the “Illustrations.” The 
author took this heavy burden upon himself and contended 
with it for ten years, at the close of which period, I am 
sorry to say, he is much out of pocket, while it is needless 
to add that he has not received any compensation for his 
many years of persistent labour and anxiety, and for his 
special knowledge. The support he has received at home, 
for what is really a national w 7 ork, cannot have given him 
much encouragement. There are less than sixty subscribers 
for the whole of the British Islands. This scarcely indicates 
much patriotic support, and but for the subscribers which 
were found in nearly every country of Europe, in the United 
States, India, and Australia, the work must necessarily have 
been abandoned, which would have been a very great loss to 
Science. Such a work as this should surely find a place in 
every public library in the kingdom, to say nothing of 
private libraries of any pretensions, to which it would always 
prove a valuable contribution and illustration of the 
botanical treasures of the country. As an illustrated 
botanical work it takes rank with “ Sowerby’s English 
Botany,” and since Sowerby’s time no other work has 
auy claim to such a position. 
A suggestion has been made to issue the fifty sets which 
still remain, in parts, if fifty new subscribers can be found, 
at the rate of two parts monthly, at the original subscription 
price of five shillings per part, thus ensuring its complete 
issue in three years. I hope this suggestion may be carried 
out, and that it shall no longer remain a stigma on British 
botanists, that they could permit the author to work ten 
years for nothing, with a balance against lnm of nearly one 
hundred pounds. 
J. E. Bagnall. 
