good and sufficient reasons have presented themselves to my mind why they should be regarded in a very different light. It cannot with any show of propriety be objected that lichens are an uninteresting class of plants, and consequently undeserving of serious study. So far from this, they are in various respects as interesting not only as any other class of cryptogamics, but also as many other plants, which occupy a higher and more conspicuous place in the scale of vegetation. Being as it were the pioneers of all other plant life, for which they serve to prepare the soil on the coral islet and the barren rock,--constituting the most generally diffused class of terrestrial plants on the surface of the globe, from arctic lands to tropical climes,--presenting essential simplicity of structure, being composed entirely of an aggregation of cells, though at the same time this is amply compensated for by endless variety of form,--adorning as they do, with their variously coloured thalli and apothecia, the most romantic and the most dreary situations,--affording in some cases valuable material for the dyer and the perfumer, nay, even for medicinal purposes,--supplying, as some of them do, more or less, nutritious food for man and beast, under circumstances and in regions where no other can be had,--it is very evident that the prevailing neglect of them cannot arise from their being in any way uninteresting, and destitute either of beauty or utility. Nor does this, as might be inferred, result from any peculiar difficulty attending their study. There indeed seems to be a notion prevalent, not only amongst the students of phænogamic, but also amongst those of cryptogamic plants, that there are, somehow or other, almost insuperable difficulties connected with the pursuit of Lichenology. Now, it is quite true that the correct study of these plants is by no means an easy one, and that an accurate knowledge of them is not to be obtained in a day or an hour; but the same may, with equal truth, be said of any other branch of Phytology, which requires minute research and microscopical examination. Here, as elsewhere, there is no royal road to learning, and the difficulties which lie in the way must be boldly faced. If the student can only muster up sufficient courage to cross the threshold and prosecute his investigations with zeal and steady perseverance, he will find in this, as in other cases, that the difficulties which looked so formidable at a distance, will, one by one, be successfully surmounted.