Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/59

 BBITISH fUNGUS J'LORA. 48 come* His daring speculations and fertility of ideas, bad they been united with an equal share of patient observation, would have raised him to a high place in the history of natural science. The promised Volume III., dealing with Isolation and Physiological Selection, will' be looked forward to with a greater anticipation of guidance now that this volume has shown an advance on its pre- decessor. The questions discussed in the present one frequently involve botanical questions, though they are of interest to us as general biological questions ; but even the *' hard-boiled botanist," as he is amusingly called, will find something to interest him, and probably disagree with him, in chapter viii. on Characters as Adaptive and {Specific. G.M. British Fungus Flora: a Classified Text-hook of Mycology. By George Massee. Vol. IV. 8vo, pp. 522. London : Bell & Sons. 1895. Price 7s. 6d. During the last quarter of a century so many species of fungi have been added to the British flora, that the genera founded by the older mycologists have become too cumbersome, and have been made to include species too far removed in structural affinity. This is especially the case in those groups which require the use of the microscope for their accurate diagnosis, and which, having been examined only with the naked eye or a pocket-lens, are so briefly and incompletely described, that it is often impossible to ascertain what species the author had in view. Since the publication of the Handbook of British Fungi in 1871, Dr. Cooke and other of our leading mycologists have taken in hand different groups, and revised them as thoroughly as the state of knowledge at the time permitted. But many orders still remaining in confusion, and the number of species still increasing, Mr. Massee has undertaken, in the British Fungus Flora now in course of publi- cation, the gigantic task of the revision and rearrangement of all the species recorded as British. This work has now reached the fourth volume, which treats of three out of the five families of the Ascumycetes, viz. : the Gyvmoascacece, the HysteriacecBj and the Discomycetes. The Introduction contains a general description of the order, a clear and concise description of the terms employed in describing the diflerent parts of the plant, and valuable hints on the collection and examination of specimens. This is followed by the systematic arrangement, which, in accordance with the plan of the entire work, commences with the least, and ends with the most highly- developed group. This is no doubt in accordance with nature, but may be confusing to the student who has always been accustomed to work in the contrary direction, and whose herbarium is arranged on the old lines. This part of the work commences with the small family of the GymnoascacecB^ in which the spore-containing asci are naked, the ascophore being absent. Then follow the HysteriacecB, in which the fructification is enclosed in a well-developed ascophore; and