Book Review

The Advance of the Fungi

by E. C. Large
new introductory material by Karen-Beth Scholthof, Paul D. Peterson, and Clay S. Griffith
St. Paul, MN: APS Press, 2003. 488 pp. with 64 black and white illustrations
paper bound, $69.00
ISBN: 0-89054-308-9

Upon discussing my thoughts of The Advance of the Fungi at the most recent MSA/NAMA meetings in Asheville, I found out that a number of colleagues read this work quite a long time ago. Many were students at the time and felt this book was, in part, responsible for their eventual pursuit of a career in mycology or plant pathology. I would have to say that, although I had not heard of this book until being sent a copy by MSA Book Review Editor Amy Rossman, I too would have been drawn to the field. APS Press is to be congratulated and praised for re-issuing The Advance of the Fungi, a work originally published in 1940.

The Advance of the Fungi is an absorbing collection of stories recounting many of the earliest discoveries in mycology. In my opinion, the book would have been better titled The Advent of Mycology: I will explain why. As a plant pathology student (and one who was most interested in fungi), I became quite familiar with the classic studies by the fathers of mycology: the Reverend M. J. Berkeley and the cause of Late Blight of potato which brought about the famine in Ireland; the brothers Tulasne and their illustrations of the reproductive structures of fungi; de Bary and his discoveries of rusts and alternate hosts; and Millardet's serendipitous "Bordeaux mixture" that saved France's grapes (and wine) from powdery mildew, thus preserving their economy (and national identity!). In contrast, the dogged work of Berkeley and others was not enough to save British India and Ceylon from the destruction of coffee rust (but the fungus did spawn a sudden taste for tea in England!).

The Advance of the Fungi is essential reading for all mycologists and students of plant pathology because it recounts these classic discoveries, but in much greater detail than the paragraph or two afforded in textbooks. The author gives absorbing and detailed (though never boring, and frequently humorous) accounts of the events leading to the discoveries of fungi as pathogens. Large includes excerpts of correspondence between the pioneering mycologists and historical details of the socio-economic underpinnings to inform the reader of the big picture surrounding many famous epidemics. For example: we are all aware of the role of Phytophthora infestans in the Irish potato famine, but how many of us have heard of the repressive British Corn Laws and their relation to the famine?

As a mycologist, I am fascinated by the studies of the early pioneers in the field. The only book I have read that can compare with The Advance of the Fungi is Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard by Nik Money. Mycology is a very young field, dating only to about the time of Darwin. While Pasteur is credited with jump-starting the field of microbiology and the concept of pathology with his "germ theory" (no, I'm not forgetting the contributions of Leeuwenhouk and Hooke), a handful of mycologists, including Berkeley, anticipated his discoveries by a few years in tracking down the fungal cause of plant diseases. With The Advance of the Fungi we can better appreciate those ground breaking discoveries (and a number of early blunders) through scientific correspondence and letters to the journals published by the gardening clubs of the day.

Large skillfully illustrates how early researchers determined that the development of one disease may contribute to the elucidation of another: "Berkeley recognized this [while working on potato late blight] when he turned back to the half-forgotten work of Prevost and adduced observations that had been made on the propagation of the Bunt of the wheat, in support of his hypothesis that the 'Potato Murrain' was of fungal origin." As a result of his diligent work to solve the mystery of the potato blight, and "[a]s nobody seemed inclined to take up the idea," Berkeley began in 1854 to write a series of papers on "Vegetable Pathology" for The Gardner's Chronicle. Berkeley felt that it was important to devote a branch of science to the diseases of plants; the field of "Human Pathology" recently had been recognized. What Large is chronicling is the inception of the field of plant pathology. These weekly articles (turned out by the Reverend M. J. Berkeley) were to be the forerunners of the leaflets and monographs on plant diseases that have been issued by every Department or Ministry of Agriculture in the world to this very day. Years later, it would be the many plant pathologists who would lead the way in solving many of the mysteries of the mycological world. For example, it was the German forest pathologist Robert Hartig who would discover that the honey mushroom could compact its mycelium into the rhizomorphs that resemble bootlaces, thus allowing it to spread from tree to tree.

It is important also to remember these early few mycological pioneers for their contribution to the field by the training of countless experts who would come after them. For example, M. S. Woronin, who would discover the bacteria in the root nodules of legumes as well as "new sorts" of root pathogens including Plasmodiophora brassicae, trained in the lab of Anton de Bary. The same year that Woronin published his last paper on Plasmodiophora (1876), Robert Koch was just arriving on the scene with descriptions of the life cycle of anthrax of sheep.

Although it may raise a few eyebrows to suggest it, even some politicians merit remembrance for their contribution to the research of fungi and other plant pathogens. In 1862, during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Congress created the Department of Agriculture and mandated that every state should have "one or more Land Grant Colleges" where, I trust, many readers conduct their own studies.

Few textbooks in mycology these days bother to mention the early pioneers of mycology to whom we are all indebted. For example, most of us know that Anton de Bary is considered the Father of Mycology, but you will have a hard time finding any mention of him in mycology textbooks. Why is his name not a household word when, as a result of his work with microbes, Pasteur's is? And what of Dr. Sedillot, who coined the term "microbe"? Numerous papers presented recently at the MSA Annual Meeting focused on taxonomic studies, but how many of us can recall the contributions to field by the great Elias Magnus Fries? I hope I have made my point.

The Advance of the Fungi should be required reading for all students of mycology; anyone interested in mycology will find this book enjoyable and most enlightening.

— Review by Britt Bunyard
— The Mycophile 45:6, Nov/Dec 2004
— Originally published September, 2004, in Inoculum 55(4) - Reprinted with permission