July, 1892. 
THE HAPPY FUNGUS-HUNTER. 
161 
together a number of observations previously scattered in 
many journals on the neglected group of which it treats. 
But weighted as it is with so much useless matter, it loses 
half its value. And even throughout it, one sees traces 
everywhere of the author’s well-known habit of considering 
the Kew Herbarium as the limits of his universe. All that 
cannot be grubbed up from the treasures within those walls, 
is as if it existed not. To take an example: on page 106 
one may read—“ The genus Piptocephalis has not yet been 
met with in Britain”—but the pages of the “Journal 
of Botany” and the “ Reports' on the Fungi of the East of 
Scotland ” could both tell a different tale. Two species at 
least are known to exist here, and a little personal research 
in the proper habitats, by one who has leisure to devote to it, 
would soon have added to the number. 
But the glory of the field naturalist has departed. The 
biologist or physiologist is the hero of the hour, and looks 
down with infinite contempt upon the luckless being who is 
still content to search for species. ’Tis but the swing of 
the pendulum, the fashion of the day, and like many another 
fashion, “ Made in Germany. ” Soon will come the inevitable 
reaction ; but it is, to say the least of it, decidedly ungrateful 
in the “ biologist” to pour such vials of wrath upon the poor 
searchers of the past, who, if they did nothing else, at any 
rate provided the theorists with the foundations of their airy 
structures. For out of his own spinnerets, like a spider’s 
silk, the closet-naturalist cannot evolve the species and genera 
with which he deals. These are the rewards of one who goes 
down upon his knees and patiently, hour after hour, turns 
over heaps of rotting twigs and leaves, or who tramps 
through woods and fields the livelong day, and returns at 
night to his study with the spoil. The observations of the 
laboratory are, of course, right and proper in their place ; but a 
world constructed out of them would bear but little re¬ 
semblance to the glorious vision which the field naturalist sees 
unfolding constantly before his eyes. Liberavi animam meam. 
The “ Synthetic Philosophy.” —We extract the following from the 
Athenaeum, of 11th June :—“ Readers of the ‘Synthetic Philosophy’ will 
be interested to hear that one of the closing volumes is through the 
press, and will be issued as soon as arrangements for simultaneous 
publication in the United States are completed—probably about June 
20th. In the preface to ‘Justice,' published in June last, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer expressed the hope that along with Part I., ‘The Data of 
Ethics,’ long since published, Parts II. and III., completing the first 
volume of ‘ The Principles of Ethics,’ might presently be completed. 
This hope has now been fulfilled.” 'The book was published on 
Tuesday, 28th June, a handsome octavo of nearly 600 pages, and we 
hope soon to give a notice of it in the “ Midland Naturalist.” 
