SIXTY YEARS OF BRITISH MYCOLOGY. 221
numerical increase of species with less favour as an incentive to
work, and a more thorough knowledge of organs and functions
as of a higher value, than at any time during the past half
century. We have only to refer to a few of the most important
Memoirs which have been published abroad, and translated at
home, to afford evidence of the great intellectual advance of
mycology generally during the reign of the Queen.
We may first call to mind the writings of the Brothers
Tulasne, and especially how they opened our eyes to the
prevalence of polymorphism. How they prepared the way for a
better understanding of the Uredines and Ustilagines, and what
good service they rendered by their Memoirs on the Nidulariacei,
the Tremellinae, the Tuberacei, and others, and how they helped
in the cause of progress. Then we cannot forget what Anton
de Bary did with fermentation, with those Moulds which cause
disease in living plants, the Peronosporei, and the "White-
Rusts," and his multitudinous suggestions in other directions,
which made him a power in the age in which he flourished.
Brefeld also, whether we are prepared to accept everything or
not, which he propounded, was another factor and an important
one, in the progress of mycology. His elaborate illustrations
to his papers are a marvel of patient and unflagging research
such as were never dreamt of fifty years ago. Then there were
Van Tieghem's papers on the Mucors, Thaxter on Ento-
mophthora, Cornu, Pringsheim,and others on the Saprolegniaceae,
a host of exponents of Heteroecism, and almost as many on
Symbiosis, which theories had no existence forty years since.
Truly it has been a period of great activity in the Department
of Fungi, both in classification, as witnessed by Saccardo's
Sylloge, and in morphology and physiology, so that the
Mycologist of to-day, if he would be master of his subject, must
give it his undivided attention and be content with riding but
one hobby if he would ride well.
Contemporaneous with this advance and increase of know-
ledge has occurred a diminution or delimitation of species,
especially amongst the microscopical fungi. This has resulted
from a discovery that many of the genera, so called, fifty years
ago, only contained immature or imperfect conditions of other
fungi. This was especially the case with the Uredines, and
has considerably reduced the number of the Moulds, or
Hyphomycetes. As, for instance, Uredo, Lecythea, Trichobasis, &c.,
as conditions of Puccinia and of Uromyces ; and Aecidium as an