


38 
In the later half of the sixties, a few of us who devoted our 
attention—and I may truthfully say derived our greatest pleasure— 
from the study of fungi, began annually to meet at Hereford under 
the genial auspices of the Woolhope Club, impersonated in the 
energetic and kind-hearted secretary, the late Dr. H. G. Bull. We 
were but few in number, but we were full of enthusiasm. Messrs. 
Berkeley, Broome, Bull and Currey have joined the majority, but 
Worthington Smith, W. Phillips, M. C. Cooke, Howse, Spencer 
Perceval, Bucknall, Vize, and myself remain to look back with pleasant 
remembrances of our yearly gatherings in the cathedral city of the 
West of England. We soon found that to do any good with the 
larger fungi we must sketch them—-otherwise what we learned one 
year we forgot the next. Many of us were skilful draughtsmen ; 
but whether we were skilful draughtsmen or unskilful, we had to do 
our best, and we should as soon have thought of going to Hereford 
without our paint boxes as we should have thought of going without 
our hats. Now it was my misfortune not to belong to the skilful 
draughtsmen group, but for all that I had to do the best I could, and it 
is surprising how true the old adage proved —“ Where there isa will 
there is a way ”—for after a time I did succeed in producing sketches 
which the initiated were able to recognize, when the names were 
written with sufficient legibility beneath the species. We were all 
good friends ; we had no petty jealousies : when a fungus was found 
at Shrewsbury it made its way to Hereford, to Norfolk, to London, to 
Batheaston and to Sibbertoft,and vice versa. As years rolled on, Dr. 
M. C. Cooke began to publish a series of coloured plates of the British 
Agarics, and although he personally up to that time had paid very 
little attention to this particular group of fungi, yet by his indomi- 
table perseverance he managed to produce a figure of almost every 
British species. We all of us placed our sketches at his disposal. 
Now it is very curious how after a little practice one is able to catch 
the character of a fungus on paper; and so, although many of our 
sketches—at least mine were, I know—innocent of perspective, 
devoid of detail in the matter of shading, badly drawn and worse 
coloured, yet they formed the basis from which it was possible to con- 
struct very useful figures. The sketches of Mr. Worthington 
G. Smith W. Phillips, Dr. Bull, and C, Bucknall, do not, of 
course, belong to the same category. ‘The point I wish to emphasize 
is this: that however rude a sketch may be, it has a definite value ; 
and I would impress upon all those who attempt the study of the 
Hymenomycetes that they should make coloured outlines of any species 
that may be newtothem. The trouble is not great, but the value, as 
these sketches accumulate, considerable. Those of us who have de-: 
voted any length of time to the study of these fungi, will not fail to have 
been struck by the difficulty of recognising species from descriptions, 
