Item 75 - Notes by [Marcel Hardy] on ascomycetes and other fungi

Hardy trained at the École Militaire in Brussels, from where he deserted aged around 21 and fled to Edinburgh with his wife. He trained in botany and geography under Patrick Geddes and graduated from Edinburgh University in 1903. A variety of jobs followed. He was assistant in botany to Patrick Geddes at Dundee University College, studied at the Sorbonne, managed estates in Mexico and Panama and was tutor to an Indian Prince.

After World War I, Hardy returned to Britain and advised Lord Leverhulme on the prospects for commercial agriculture on the Isle of Lewis. In early 1920, he was nominated as one of the five representatives on the Reparations Commission, which had been set up to calculate the sums Germany must pay the allies, in recompense for the expenditure they had incurred in waging World War I. Hardy's task was to report into the state of German agriculture. Hardy subsequently settled in Berlin.

Charles Flahault was a French botanist, among the early pioneers of phytogeography, phytosociology, and forest ecology. Born in Bailleul, Nord, he received his Baccalauréat de Lettres in 1872, after which he became a gardener at the Jardin des Plantes de Paris. He entered the Sorbonne in 1874 obtaining his doctoral degree in 1878. He continued his studies at Uppsala University in 1879, then in 1881 joined the University of Montpellier where in 1883 he became professor of botany, and in 1890 he founded the Institut de Botanique. He resided in Montpellier until his death.