SIXTY YEARS OF BRITISH MYCOLOGY.
217
At this time, and before the Accession of the Queen, dates
the first effort in the. History of British Botany, to encourage
the separate study of the Cryptogamia, and it was only just in
advance of that event. This was the dawning of the Victorian
epoch, which commenced with the publication of Hooker's,
continuation of Smith's English Flora. These two volumes
containing the Mosses and Hepatica? by William Jackson
Hooker ; Lichens, in which doubtless Borrer and Turner
assisted; Algae by W. H. Harvey, with the Diatoms by Dr.
Greville ; and the Fungi by Rev. M. J. Berkeley. In these
names we recognize the pioneers of all that was done for nearly
half a century in British Cryptogamic Botany. Hence, as far
as the Fungi is concerned, the publication of Smith's Flora
Supplement, by M. J. Berkeley, in 1833, inaugurated the special
study of Fungi.
On this subject Hooker remarks in his preface regarding
the Fungi "notwithstanding all that has been done by Wither-
ing, Sowerby, Purton, Carmichael, and Greville, must yet be
acknowledged as the least understood of all our British Flora."
If we allow our imagination to revert to this period we can soon
discover from the local Floras the extent of knowledge possessed
by Botanists of the Fungi of their localities. Abbot's Flora
Bedfordiensis (1798), Jones and Kingston's Flora Devoniensis (1829),
Greville's Flora Edinensis (1824), Hooker's Flora Scotica (1821),
Hudson's Flora Anglica (1778), Johnston's Flora of Berwick-on-
Tweed (1829), Lightfoot's Flora Scotica (1777), Mackay's Flora
Hibernica (1836), Purton's Midland Flora (1817), Relhan's Flora
Cantabrigiensis (1820), Sibthorp's Flora Oxoniensis (1794), to
which may be added Withering's Arrangement 3rd edition (1796),
and Gray's Natural Arrangement (1821).
From all these sources we discover that the total number
of Fungi known for the localities determined were :—