177 
THE FUNGUS-ROOT (MYCORRHIZA), 
Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the Annual 
Meeting on 24th March, 1923. 
BY R. PAULSON, F.L.S., F.R.M.S. 
(With 3 Plates). 
NE of the time-honoured functions of the Essex Field 
Club is the autumn fungus foray, which has been held 
annually in Epping Forest since the club was inaugurated in 
1880. 
At the ordinary meeting, held in connection with the foray 
of 1922, the suggestion was made that it is advisable, in addi- © 
tion to the systematic work, to attempt some investigations 
having a biological, ecological and even economic bias, and 
further, that one indoor meeting, devoted entirely to fungi, 
might be arranged each year just previous to the autumn outdoor 
gathering. At the foray itself, the specialist has little time 
in which to explain matters ; the energies of the day are directed 
towards collecting and arranging in systematic order for the 
purposes of exhibition, hence the advantage of an indoor meeting 
before, or shortly after, the annual foray. 
Fungus forays, having been organised annually for forty-two 
years in succession, have enabled the Club to record the Forest 
fungus flora in its many aspects, resulting from varied weather 
conditions, not only those conditions existing during the few 
weeks immediately before the foray, but those that marked the 
character of the weather for the whole previous year. The listing 
of species has been so thoroughly carried out with the invaluable 
aid of many mycological experts, that there is little prospect of 
adding many more of the larger fungi, Basidiomycetes and 
Discomycetes, to the flora. This does not mitigate in the 
slightest degree against the continued holding of the foray annu- 
ally. There is every reason for carrying it on in the future as 
in the past, for it is only in connection with this well tried scheme 
that the additional, somewhat broader outlook will receive the 
impetus that engenders progress. 
