VI 
FUNGI AND HOW TO KNOW THEM 
throughout the world. Mr. C. G. Lloyd, a well-known 
collector of fungi, writes: “The more specimens we receive 
from all portions of the world the more strongly we become 
convinced that fungi are plants of wide distribution, and 
that the fungus flora of the world is practically the same ” (the 
italics are his). 
Half a century ago, Berkeley noted that out of 275 species 
then recorded from Tasmania, no less than 113 were British, 
and 20 others were European species that may be expected 
to occur in Britain ; yet so little has the study of fungi 
advanced in popular estimation that I have on several 
occasions astonished people by remarking that a large 
number of fungi are cosmopolites ! 
It is only by first creating an interest in the larger and 
more familiar species that we can expect to stimulate inquiry 
into the life histories of the minute forms; and the majority 
of the parasites so dreaded by farmers, gardeners and 
foresters are of microscopic dimensions. 
It is the “ larger fungi ” only that have received attention 
in this book, and of these, for the most part, only very 
common ones. The term includes those species that can 
be identified without the aid of a microscope, all of which 
are comprised in the two great Orders known as Basidio- 
mycetes and Ascomycetes. 
The genera of the Basidiomycetes have been considered 
in detail: this was necessary, though it involved allusion to 
some very rare species and a few insignificant ones, to enable 
the student thoroughly to grip the principles of classification. 
An examination of the keys to the Families and Genera 
will speedily reveal a fact that has been doubted by many, 
viz., that the bases of classification of fungi are just as 
firmly fixed as are those of our flowering plants; it is, there- 
