Book Description

Excerpt from Handbook of British Fungi: With Full Descriptions of All the Species, and Illustrations of the Genera Thirty-five years ago one of the volumes of the "English Flora" contained full descriptions of all the species then known of British Fungi. Prior to this several floras, and especially Mr. Samuel Gray's "Natural Arrangement" and Withering's "Arrangement," included the fungi; but it was left to the Rev. M. J. Berkeley to collect the materials, and eliminate from them, a Mycological Flora of the British Islands. During the thirty-five years that have elapsed since the appearance of the last complete Mycologic Flora, no attempt has been made to revise it, to incorporate species since discovered, and to bring it up to the standard of modern science. No apology, therefore, is necessary for the present effort, since all will admit that the want of such a manual has long been felt, and this work makes its appearance under the advantage that it seeks to occupy a place which has long been vacant. It was my intention at first to have added an introduction, treating of the structure and affinities of the different orders and genera included in the present volume, with an explanation of my own views as to the classification adopted, but as the work proceeded it so far exceeded the dimensions originally estimated, that it was found impossible to do justice to this portion of the subject here, and the "Introduction" has been postponed, in the hope that hereafter it may appear as a separate volume. It may suffice to state that, in the face of the bewildering chaos of new genera which have of late been proposed on the Continent, especially for Ascomycetous forms, I have endeavoured to avoid, as much as possible, encumbering these pages with a nomenclature often fanciful, seldom necessary, and which may, at best, be regarded as transitional. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.