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prove them real, and not the product of the paint-brush or the 
printing press. As for the text of my lecture, which I compiled 
with a tyro’s temerity, I fear it was no great thing either; yet 
the fact remains that the schoolmasters behaved as though they 
were more than commonly interested. So it was also with 4 
gathering of students in training, and other audiences of the 
usual type of local scientific societies. My small experience, 
then, shows that Mycology is a very attractive topic, even when 
presented by an advocate so poorly equipped as your humble 
servant ; handled by masters of the subject, such as are here to- 
night, it will, I feel assured, be found a popular and useful branch 
of Nature-study. Useful I think in a high degree if it can be 
made to help, in soever small degree, to open the eyes and 
minds of the young to the things of country life. I am not in- 
deed unmindful, as I said at the beginning, of the good that has 
come and does still come from the hfe of the town. Liberty 
and learning had their birthplace within its walls. But town- 
life has, or is beginning to have, its drawbacks and its dangers 
—exaggerated in some quarters though we deem them to be— 
and at the very least we may urge that Mother Earth has more 
in her lap than the pavements can yield or the gas-lamps dis- 
cover. We would persuade the rising generation that the 
hedgerow should not be altogether abandoned for the shop- 
window, or the hillside be forsaken for the music-hall. We 
would say to the young people that the country is full of in- 
terest and charm, that they will find the study of Nature fraught 
with a sweet and abiding refreshment, and finally that among 
Nature’s rich store-houses there is one chamber, often unopened, 
but well worthy of at least a passing glimpse, full to the door 
of things quaint, curious and beautiful—the Fungus Flora of 
our native land. 
