A lot of mycologists work in industry, making cheeses and yogurts and the like, so it is hard to say how many are actively involved in research, but we can safely take it that there are more species of fungi to be found than there are people to find them.

The okapi, the nearest living relative of the giraffe, is now known to exist in substantial numbers in the rain forests of Zaire — the total population is estimated at perhaps thirty thousand — yet its existence wasn't even suspected until the twentieth century. The large flightless New Zealand bird called the takahe had been presumed extinct for two hundred years before being found living in a rugged area of the country's South Island. In 1995 a team of French and British scientists in Tibet, who were lost in a snowstorm in a remote valley, came across a breed of horse, called the Riwoche, that had previously been known only from prehistoric cave drawings. The valley's inhabitants were astonished to learn that the horse was considered a rarity in the wider world.