How fungi grown in a lab dish can be told apart: a 1926 study

To name a fungus, a scientist first has to decide which group it belongs to. William Andrew Archer asked whether one group, the Sphaeropsidales, could be sorted more reliably by growing its members in culture and studying the shapes and structures they formed there.

He looked at them both under the microscope and with the naked eye, and wrote the work up as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan in August 1925. It was printed the next year in the journal Annales Mycologici and, separately, in Berlin. Library catalogues record 84 pages with 17 figures in the text and eight plates.

This copy is the separately printed offprint, issued by R. Friedländer & Sohn of Berlin, in its original pale blue paper wrappers. They are torn, with pieces lost at the spine and the top left corner, and frayed at the edges. It was once in an institutional library, which later withdrew it. The pages and plates have not been collated.