_Pezizæ_, sits down, and after making a promising collection of horse or cow-dung, carefully wraps these treasures in tissue paper, and puts them in his "sandwich-box." One word of warning to the beginner--never, on any account, amass and put away a lot of imperfect materials with insufficient notes, for in the end they will prove worse than useless. To name fungi with certainty the fullest notes and most complete materials are indispensable: without these nothing whatever can be done. It is far better to laboriously make out twenty species, and know them in all their aspects for certain, than to amass imperfect materials of two thousand without any sound botanical knowledge. If the former course is pursued, the study of fungi will prove a never-failing source of pleasure to the mind and of health to the body. In conclusion, I cannot do better than quote a few words written by the illustrious Fries (now more than eighty years of age) in the preface to a recent work of his on Fungi. He says: "Now in the evening of my life, I rejoice to call to mind the abundant pleasures which my study of the more perfect fungi, sustained for more than half a century, has throughout this long time afforded me.... Therefore, to botanists, who can wander at will the country side, I commend the study of these plants as a perennial fountain of delight and admiration for that Supreme Wisdom which reigns over universal nature." XIII. LICHENS. By the Rev. Jas. Crombie, F.L.S., etc. Much as it is to be regretted, it cannot be questioned that of those who have devoted themselves to the study of botany, lichenists have always been "few and far between." While flowering plants have had their hosts of enthusiastic students, and while other classes of cryptogamics have had due attention paid to them, the study of lichens has, up even to the present time, been but too much neglected. To many indeed the term conveys only some faint and confused idea, and though they know that there are plants so called, they are at the same time utterly ignorant of their nature. With flowering plants, ferns, mosses, seaweeds, and even fungi, they have at least some acquaintance, more or less accurate; but lichens they generally pass by with indifference, regarding them merely as "time-stains" on the trees, the walls, and the rocks where they grow. Nay, we have even met with some professed, and otherwise well-informed botanists, who, while recognizing certain of the larger and more conspicuous species as lichens, yet fancied that many of the smaller and more obscure species were merely inorganic discolorations. It is certainly very difficult to account for such a state of matters at the present day, when so much attention is being paid to almost every other class of plants. Vainly have I sought either in the nature of the case itself or in my conversations with botanists, for any intelligible solution of such apathy and neglect: though many