SIXTY YEARS OF BRITISH MYCOLOGY.
By M. C. COOKE, M.A., LL.D.. A.L.S., Sc.
[Read October 16th, 1897.]
THE current year has been remarkable for its varied retro-
spects of the last six decades, and to these we propose to
add another which will cover a field not yet traversed, and one
of interest to a somewhat' limited section of Her Majesty's
subjects. The study of Botany has advanced greatly in the
present century, but in no division of that large subject has the
advance been more remarkable than in that which embraces the
Cryptogamia. Long after the list of Flowering-plants had
assumed very respectable proportions, that of the Cryptogamia
was small and somewhat confused. The study of these lower
organisms was to a large extent excluded from general botany,
and until very recent times the special study of Mosses, Lichens,
Fungi, and Algae had never been attempted, save to a very
limited extent. If we go back to our boyhood's days, although we
have but very faint recollections of the reign of George IV., the
reign of William IV. was not at all an active one for Biological
Science. The instrument which was called a compound
microscope in those days was only a toy, and wholly useless for
botanical investigation. Ferns were recognized and placed at
the end of the Flowering-plants, but for the rest Mosses only
were beginning to be looked at with something of scientific
interest.
Previous to 1837 only one Handbook of Botany, which was
in common use, can now be remembered, and that was
Macgillivray's Edition of Withering's Arrangement, in one
volume, but this was confined to the Flowering-plants, and those
students who desired to gain some knowledge of the lower forms
of vegetable life had to consult the complete Withering, in four
volumes. Sowerby's English Botany did not come within the
range of the ordinary student. This was the domestic era of
the tinder box and rushlight, and before the first boxes of
"Lucifers" astonished the natives at the cost of twopence half-
penny each. There was real astonishment in rural districts
over the first box introduced amongst them. Little flat matches
drawn between folded sandpaper, producing an immediate
flame. "Lucifers" they were called and Lucifer, under another
cognomen, was supposed to be at the bottom of the mystery.