REVIEWS

precis de Mycologie. Mycologie generale, mycologie humaine et animale, techniques.By M. LANGERON. znd edition revised and enlarged by R. VAN­BREUSEGHEM. (Masson et Cie, Paris, 1952.) iX+703 pp., 461 text­figures. Price: Fr. 4800 (bound: Fr. 5400).

The publication of Langeron's Precis de Mycologie in 1945 was an important mycologicalevent. The first printing was soon exhausted, and the appearance of a second and muchenlarged edition will be welcomed by mycologists both for itself and as a fitting memorialto the late Dr Langeron's mycological scholarship and industry. The attractive andstrong covers of the new Precis enclose a mycological trilogy which provide a severe testof a reviewer's versatility, but any ill-considered judgements are unlikely to affect thewide circulation that this notable work will receive.

The first part is Langeron's very individual and now familiar presentation of generalmycology. After a brief systematic outline (which might perhaps have been morelogically placed at the end of the section, if not at the end of the volume, as in the firstedition) there follow chapters or series of chapters on morphology, spore discharge anddispersal, the principles of mycology, and sexuality, and if the treatment is in many waysunsuited as an undergraduate text it provides a stimulating antidote to the traditionaltaxonomic approach. A jaded examiner will find many fresh ideas for testing the know­ledge of the 'question-spotter' while the student will find much to enliven the mosthackneyed essay topic. The generous selection of more than a hundred illustrations fromBuller's studies on spore discharge and dispersal and on sex in agarics is particularlywelcome now that Buller's Researches are no longer obtainable.

The second, and very useful, part on technique is the mycological supplement toLangeron's Precis de Microscopie, 1949, while the final section is a new treatment ofmedical mycology by Vanbreuseghem, the student and friend of Langeron who hasedited the new edition. This good straightforward account of the principal mycosesof man and animals merits separate notice as a major contribution to the growingliterature of medical mycology. Here one can only wonder what the medical reader willmake of the mycological section and the pure mycologist of the medical mycology butperhaps the juxtaposition of these rather diverse elements will encourage the specialistto wander from his own narrow path. G. C. AINSWORTH

Index ofFungi 1929, pp. 40, 1952, price lOS.; Index ofFungi 1930, pp. 123,1952, price 25s.; Index ofFungi 1936-1939, pp. 117, 1950, price 30s.By F. PETRAK. (Commonwealth Mycological Institute, Kew,Surrey.)

Since 1940, the Commonwealth Mycological Institute has been publishing the IndexofFungi as half-yearly lists of new species and new varieties, new combinations and newnames together with host indexes. Similar lists for 1920-35 were published by FranzPetrak in Just's Botanischer Jahresbericht during 1930-44. Since the war, at the instigationof the Commonwealth Mycological Institute, Dr Petrak compiled a final instalmentwhich has been published as IndexofFungi 1936-9, whilst the Institute acquired the stockof Petrak's 1932-5 list and began to re-issue the others, the stocks of which had beendestroyed, in the Index of Fungi series. Cumulative indexes to the first ten years of theIndexofFungi and to the series of Petrak lists are promised, and so before long mycologistsshould have a virtually complete index to species and names published since 1920. Thisproject, which is clearly a notable contribution to the 'organization of the study ofsystematic mycology', deserves the support of mycologists everywhere. G. c. A.