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THE USES OF FUNGI.1
By HENRY T. WHARTON, M.A., M.R.C.S., F.Z.S.
[Read October 3rd, 1885.]
Sometimes our friends, who do not know the delights which accom-
pany our fungological studies, ask us, with an air of superiority, which
we are apt to regard as derision, "What is the use of them ?" To
a somewhat similar question Faraday is reported to have replied by
asking "What is the use of a baby ?" The old cry of cui bono will
probably be uppermost in the minds of the ignorant so long as the world
endures. The only true knowledge which mankind has ever reached
has been obtained by observers who worked more for love than for any
hope of reward. But in a scientific age we have no need to shelter
ourselves behind this or any other truism. We may not feel inclined
to give an elaborate answer to our friends' query; but it is well for
us to think, in the presence of a truth-seeking assemblage like this,
containing, as it must, some individuals who will leave their foot-
prints on the sands of time, of the parts which that humble division
of the vegetable kingdom known as fungi play in the every day drama
of human progress. As scientific observers, we should not be deterred
from the study, the commemoration of which we celebrate to-day, if
even to ourselves we were unable as yet to aver that fungi had hitherto
shown any uses at all. But I think I shall be able to show you
to-night that the function of fungi, in relation to human development
and happiness, is, though it may regard few species, as important and
as necessary as that exercised by any other division of either the
vegetable or even of the animal world—if you will allow me to name
a distinction between these two so-called kingdoms, which had a
greater reality to our fathers than it has to us. It is a convenient
distinction, although we are now so often unable to say of a certain
organism, which, in our arrogance of superiority we call "low,"
whether it belongs to the one or to the other. To my mind, the
movements of an Amoeba are quite as wonderful as those of the most
highly organised vertebrate; and I have no doubt that you would
rather study them than enter into a discussion as to whether a Bacil-
lus were an animal or a vegetable ; although I would not dogmatise
and say that even that must needs be unprofitable. To the wide
1 This paper is the third of a series of essays on fungi prepared by Mr. Wharton for the
"Fungus Forays" of the Club. The first paper, "On Fungi as Food." is printed in the "Pro-
ceedings of the Essex Field Club," vol. iii., page lxxiii. ; and the second, '' Fungi as Poisons,"
is given in "Proceedings Essex Field Club," vol. iv., page liii.—Ed.