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12 HISTORY OF LICHENOLOGY
Among contemporary botanists, we find that De Candolle 1
in the volume
he contributed to Lamarck's French Flora, quotes only from the earlier work
of Acharius. He had probably not then seen the Methodus, as he uses none
of the new terms ; the lichens of the volume are arranged under genera
which are based more or less on the position of the apothecia on the thallus.
Florke 2
the , next writer of consequence, frankly accepts the terminology
and the new view of classification, though differing on some minor points.
Two lists of lichens, neither of particular note, were published at this
time in our country: one by Hugh Davies 3 for Wales, which adheres to the
Linnaean system, and the other by Forster 4 of lichens round Tonbridge.
Though Forster adopts the genera of Acharius, he includes lichens among
algae. A more important publication was S. F. Gray's 5 Natural Arrangement
of British Plants. Gray, who was a druggist in Walsall and afterwards
a lecturer on botany in London, was only nominally 6 the author, as it was
mainly the work of his son John Edward Gray 7 sometime , Keeper of Zoology
in the British Museum. Gray was the first to apply the principles of the
Natural System of classification to British plants, but the work was opposed
by British botanists of his day. The years following the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic wars were full of bitter feeling and of prejudice, and
anything emanating, as did the Natural System, from France was rejected
as unworthy of consideration.
In the Natural Arrangement, Gray followed Acharius in his treatment
of lichens ;
but whereas Acharius, though here and there confusing fungus
species with lichens, had been clear-sighted enough to avoid all intermixture
of fungus genera, with the exception of one only, the sterile genus Rhizo-
morpha, Gray had allowed the interpolation of several, such as Hysterium,
Xylaria, Hypoxylon, etc. He had also raised many of Acharius's subgenera
and divisions to the rank of genera, thus largely increasing their number.
This oversplitting of well-defined genera has somewhat weakened Gray's
work and he has not received from later writers the attention he deserves.
The lichens of Hooker's 8 Flora Scotica, which is synchronous with Gray's
work, number 195 species, an increase of about 90 for Scotland since the
publication of Lightfoot's Flora more than 40 years before. Hooker also
followed Acharius in his classification of lichens both in the Flora Scotica
and in the Supplement to English Botany*, which was undertaken by the
younger Sowerbys and himself. To that work Borrer (1781-1862), a keen
lichenologist, supplied many new and rare lichens collected mostly in Sussex.
It is a matter of regret that Greville should have so entirely ignored
lichens in his great work on Scottish Cryptogams. The two species of
1 De Candolle 2
1805. Florke 18x5-1819. Davies *
1813. Forster 5 :8i6. S. F. Gray 1821.
6
7
Carrington 1870. See List of the Books, etc. by John Edward Gray, 8 p. 3 1872
Hooker 1821. Hooker "
1831.
Greville 1823-1827.