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public print, sport of all kinds is being abused. We seem ip. 
capable, as a people, to steer a middle course in anything, A 
fashion becomes a craze, a craze developes into a mania. Many 
never reach beyond the knowledge of the odds on a race, the 
form of a footballer, or the centurzes of a cricketer. 
Mycology may here have its part to do. There are many 
forms of recreation. Ours may be no better than the yest. 
The amusement and pleasure that suits one person may not 
suit another. Those who educate themselves in the love of 
things, either in the animate or inanimate world, need not im- 
port envy or greed into a necessity that lies upon us. We all 
of us require some recreation; the only point is as to its form, 
and not to allow it to increase upon us so much as to deaden, as 
the Bishop rightly says, the sense of duty. If life is all play 
and pastime there is a sad desecration of noble gifts. Ruskin 
maintains “that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in 
this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain 
way.” We would then look at our study as recreative, for, 
consider: The study obliges us to make close observation, the 
numerous forms of Fungi demand attention and skill to detect 
the minute differences discernible among them. The eye re- 
quires tuition, seeing must be cultivated; fortunate the man 
who is by Nature endowed with the power to see and to appre- 
ciate. The capacity of vision increases by practice. When 
the learner has grasped the language in which, for instance, the 
parts of the mushroom are described, he may go on to the next 
specimen he falls in with, if some friend will tell him the name 
of the species to which his attention has been drawn, he goes 
with rekindled ardour to hunt it down in his volume of Cooke, 
Massee, or Stevenson. His vision is expanding; he begins to 
see sufficiently clearly to work on without dismay or disappoint- 
ment. It is the earlier steps of any true knowledge of nature 
that are the most difficult, technical language, and it cannot be 
altogether avoided, is a hindrance; but patience and renewed 
effort will conquer this as well as other things. In all walks of 
life an intelligent and educated eye is of service. It 1s a serious 
mistake to allow the power of observation to fall into atrophy 
from want of use. 
In the field of medicine, surgery, and physical science addi- 
tions are being made continually to the sum of human know- 
ledge. Novelty attends the Mycologist ; throughout his career 
he is always learning. Was there ever a student of Fungi who 
could not recall something this year that he had passed un- 
noticed before? Your experience is probably similar to mune, 
each season reveals some fresh species. It may be new to the 
scientific world of Europe or America, an addition to the local 
list which we have been interested in making; forms appeat 
