Manual of British Discomycetes.

[Lancashire Lad]

Just found some links which allow this very old but nonetheless still interesting book to be read online, here: -

A manual of the British Discomycetes, with descriptions of all the species of fungi hitherto found in Britain, included in the family and illustrations of the genera

Downloaded as PDF (scans of original book) here: -

http://www.archive.org/download/manu...hdyo00phil.pdf

Or, read online here, with clickable links to contents. (Scroll down to index pages which have clickable links to all contents pages & species covered): -

A Manual of the British Discomycetes ... - Google Books

Regards,
Mike.

[AlanS]

Despite its age this is still a very useful book. The nomenclature is much altered of course, but some of the descriptions are very valuable, especially bearing in mind that Phillips was the original author of quite a number of species.

Well worth the download for anyone with an interest in small discomycetes and who doesn't have a copy of the original.

It is often available quite cheaply second-hand, suggesting that a surprising number of copes were printed (i think it remained in print over a number of years?).

Alan

[Chris Yeates]

I fully agree with Alan it can be useful, but use with a lot of caution - I wouldn't use it to identify a Scutellinia for example; one should also bear in mind that in the words of the Dictionary of the Fungi: "The class is not accepted in modern classification but ‘discomycetes’ still has value as a colloquial descriptive term."

but for the many discomycetes with "W. Phillips" as part of the author citation it is very useful - you get effectively the full, original description (sadly not in Latin - but you can't have everything)

I am currently producing a detailed checklist of Yorkshire fungi; this of course includes a lot of historical records (especially from what one might term the Golden Age of circa 1880 - 1910 when Massee, Crossland, Needham, Cooke and Soppitt were active) and making sure that (as far as is possible) one is interpreting an old name correctly is a potential minefield - books like Phillips certainly help; there was clearly a bias towards the "discomycetes" at that time (perhaps understandably), Phillips work is clearly the basis for that portion of Vol. 4 of Massee's British Fungus Flora covering the group - sadly there was no such English equivalent for the other portions of the Ascomycota . . .

PS for reading these PDF files I would strongly advise using the lean, fast Foxit Reader rather than Adobe (have to use the latter at work and I hate it . . . . )

now back to that checklist . . . .

Chris

[Lancashire Lad]

The "Internet Archive" ( Internet Archive: Free Movies, Music, Books & Wayback Machine ), where I found the first links to the British Discomycetes book has turned out to be a veritable gold mine of fully downloadable books. (As well as all sorts of other media downloadables).

By browsing to the "texts" section, and putting fungi, or fungi British, into the search box brings up a great many books, all of which may be downloaded or simply read online. - (Once a book title is clicked on, a menu appears at left hand side of screen which gives several different options for downloads or online browsing).

Admittedly, most of the books are what might best be described as antiquarian, but there is still much useful and entertaining information to be found. Some of the ones I have browsed have some quite stunning watercolour illustrations.

There are books specifically relating to rusts/smuts,/mildews/moulds, discomycetes, ascomyctes, fungi floras, several multi volume fungal tomes, etc. etc.

Well worth a look.

Regards,
Mike.