220 SIXTY YEARS OF BRITISH MYCOLOGY.
Discomycetes, or fungi of the Peziza type, we find some of them
of a large size, but the majority are very minute and scarcely
visible to the naked eye. If we take for comparison the list of
species from Berkeley's Supplement we shall find that 154 species
were recognized in 1836, whilst Mr. Phillips enumerated 607 in
1887, or just four times as many in fifty years. This marvellous
increase in the number of known species must be attributed
partly to the increased number of observers, partly to the energy
and application of a limited number of workers, and partly to the
improved condition of the microscope and the methods of
microscopical manipulation. Any way it represents an
important fact in the history of British mycology in the past
sixty years.
Another important group are the Sphaeriaceous Fungi, or
technically the Pyrenomycetes, but it would be a question ot
time to analyse the lists of 1836 and compare them with those
of 1896. We may suggest that whilst the whole of the micro-
scopical fungi, except the Discomycetes, which were enumerated
in 1836, was only 665, the number in 1896 had risen to
2,550.
One other group need be only briefly alluded to, and that is
the group which contains the pests which infest garden and field
crops. Some call them the Hypodermaei, but they are
popularly the "Rusts" and "Smuts" so destructive to vegeta-
tion. A difference in the methods of classification would inter-
fere with a satisfactory comparison of numbers at remote
periods, but it may be taken for granted that in this department
also important numerical results have been obtained in sixty
years.
Up to now we have been content to trace the numerical
increase of recorded species in the sixty years, but this is the
poorest and most unsatisfactory way in which to report pro-
gress. Large as the numerical increase may have been this is
of small account when we take into consideration the great
accession to our knowledge of the life-history, development,
methods of reproduction, and all that concerns the inner life of
minute fungi as revealed even during the last thirty years. We
have freely taken advantage of all researches and disquisition in
France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and United States, to increase
our own store of knowledge, if we have not contributed much
ourselves. This assimilation has eventuated in our regarding