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REVIEWS

Champignons du Nord et du Midi by Andre Marchand(Societe Mycologique des Pyrenees Mediterranees - Distribution Hachette) 264pp.100 full colour plates reproducing coloured photographs. Price : About £5.00

This is a truly superb work and has already become a best seller in Francewithin only a few months of publication. Eleven thousand copies have been soldand the demand grows. Andre Marchand is a high school teacher by professionbut a first class amateur mycologist and an outstanding photographer by inclina-tion. He is also Founder President of the Societe Mycolog ique des PyreneesMediterranees, The result of this combination of qualities is an eminently read-able book with at least one magnificent colour plate for each of the hundred spe-cies described.

Some readers will remember Andre' and his wife Suzanne at our Chichesterforay in the autumn of 1967 and will know how single minded and devoted he isto his hobby. This comes through in the text of the book which is fine, preciseFrench and is rich with vivid phrases. Of Cortinarius orellanus " ... la mort nesurvient pas qu'apres un calvaire de plusiers semaines" and of Auricularia auricula-judae, "Comestible meme cru , en salade, plutot curiosite que nourriture". If anEnglishman might presume to say so, he writes such beautiful French.

It is notoriously difficult to take coloured photographs in which the colourand tone values are accurate, even more so to print good plates from them. Theseplates were printed in Barcelona and in many ways are an object lesson..

Each species is described in detail, there is a comment about its ecology,some general remarks, many of great interest, and sufficient notes about themicroscopic characteristics to ensure accurate identification. But this is not atext book for the taxonomist nor is it a field guide. There is no key to the generaor species nor does the book pretend to be exhaustive.

It is a collection of fine coloured plates of the most common of the largerfleshy fungi with excellent supporting descriptions and comment. In many waysit is in the tradition of the great eighteenth century French works on mushrooms-Paulet for example. It will bring great pleasure to mycologists who are amateursin the true sense of the word and to all those who admire fine things. It is abun-dantly clear why this book has found such instant success and has sold inquantities which even the writer of a best selling novel might envy.

Stanley Carter

Exotic Mushrooms (Nouvel Atlas des Champignons). By Henri Romagnesi. 192pp.Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York. Price £5.00.

This hard-bound volume, printed on high quality paper, is based largely on'Petit A tlas de Champignons' by the same author, reviewed in Trans. Hr. mycol.Soc. 47 (4): 631 (1964), but unlike its predecessor is aimed at bringing the aesth-etic features of macrofungi to the notice of those involved in design.

The text is minimal, occupying only 7 pages and covering information ontypes of mushrooms, the mushroom's role in the life cycle, how a mushroomgrows and poisonous and edible mushrooms. It is a general introduction in popu-lar style of average calibre and obviously designed for those with no previousknowledge of fungi. Apart from a few sweeping statements like 'micromycetesdo not interest the amateur' and quaint phrases like 'zoosporangia are organscontaining movable spores' and 'Adelomycetes reproduce by cones not spores'