BERKELEY, MILES JOSEPH English botanist ; born at Biggin Hall, Northamptonshire; educated at Rugby and Christ's college, Cambridge. He became incumbent of Apethorpe in 1837 and vicar of Sibbertoft, near Market Har borough, in 1868. He soon was recognized as the leading British authority on fungi and plant pathology. Some 6,000 species of fungi were credited to him, but his Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany, published in 1857, and his papers on "Vegetable Path ology" in the Gardener's Chronicle, in 1854 and onwards, show that he had a very broad grasp of the whole domain of physiology and morphology as understood in those days. His pioneer investi gations on the potato murrain, caused by Phytophthora in f estans, on the grape mildew, to which he gave the name Oidium Tuckeri, and on the pathogenic fungi of wheat rust, hop mildew, and various diseases of cabbage, pears, coffee, onions, tomatoes, etc., were important in results bearing on the life-history of these pests. Berkeley was the founder of British mycology, and his most im portant work on that subject is contained in the account of native British fungi in Sir W. Hooker's British Flora (1836), in his Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany (1857), and in his Outlines of British Fungology (1860). His magnificent herbarium at Kew, which contains over 9,000 specimens, and is enriched by numerous notes and sketches, forms one of the most important type series in the world.
A list of his publications will be found in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers of the Royal Society, and sketches of his life in Proc. Roy. Soc., 189o, 47, 9, by Sir Joseph Hooker, and Annals of Botany, 1897, II, by Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer.