92 
JOURNAL OF MYCOLOGY. 
[VoL. n, 
men, and born in Smaland, in the southern part of Sweden, lioth, as 
lads, attended the school at Wexio, and both entered the University of 
Lund, although Linna3us remained there only one year, linally taking 
his degree at Upsala, while Fries graduated at Lund. Loth held for 
many years, as the crowning po.sition of long and distinguished univers¬ 
ity careers, the xu’ofessorship of Lotany at Upsala, tlie most famous of 
the Swedish universities, where each died greatly beloved and honored. 
They were both voluminous in their authorship,— indeed, they have few 
parallels, in this respect, in botany,— and the period covered by the 
work of each also fairly represents the comparative difference in time in 
development of phsenogamic and cryptogamic botany. It has been said, 
furthermore, that Fries was almost the last of that generation whose 
knowledge extended over all branches of the science as it was then un¬ 
derstood and whose names were considered as authorities in all. 
Apparently the life of Fries was marked by no great privations or 
hardships. The way to his career opened most alluringly even from his 
boyhood. Ilis father was a zealous and even accomplished botanist, 
and, as the boy had no brothers or sisters, or even young playmates, his 
father early led him into a very close acquaintanceship with nature, and 
made for him friends of the little wild flowers which grew among the 
wooded hills of Smaland,—“ Friends who did not afterwards desert him, 
but were always true,” as he says many years after. He also says that 
his interest in fungi began when he was twelve years old by the discov¬ 
ery of the beautiful Hydnum coralloides one day, when out in the woods 
and fields with his mother. Few fungi had been described at that time, 
and the next day, in attempting to determine his Hydnum.^ he learned in 
a short time the characters of all the genera described in his Flora.” 
When he was fourteen, during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, his 
school at Wexio was closed and he renewed his observations on fungi 
with the greatest ardor, describing and giving temporary names to those 
he found. He continued this till 1811, when he left his gymnasium to 
enter the University of Lund, at which time he had learned to distin¬ 
guish between three and four hundred species of these plants. At the 
university he found eminent men of science, among whom was the elder 
Agardh, then a young man of twenty-six, and who was yet to make his 
fame as an algologist. Every one showed great kindness to the bright 
and enthusiastic boy, but he found his greatest delight in the library and 
its treasures of botanical works. Here he poured over the volumes of 
Persoon and Albertini, probably also over the Conspeictus Fungouum 
of Albertini and our own Schweinitz. Here, also, were the earlier vol¬ 
umes of the classic Flora Danica, begun thirty years before the birth 
of Fries, and whose completion he did not live to see. Leside the illus¬ 
trations of the latter work, there were those of Luxbaum and Persoon, 
and we can imagine how his imagination kindled toward future work as‘ 
ho here recognized many of his old friends of the Smaland woods, such 
as he had previously described. The three years of his university life 
passed quickly away, but he maintained an excellent standing, althougii 
