the SPORIFEROUS Fungi is distinguished by the hymenium, or fruit-bearing part, being open to the air. Our common Mushroom is a familiar example of this group, and stands as a representative of the large family known as Agarics. These have a cellular stem, a pileus (cap), resembling the top of an umbrella, and lamella (folds) underneath, upon which the cells are disposed, the spores springing from them; these lamellæ form the hymenium. In our autumn rambles we frequently come upon brilliant scarlet mushroom-shaped Fungi, their gaudy tops all flecked with white. These, as well as the Common Mushroom, belong to the Agaric group. They are enveloped in infancy in a volva (wrapper), which tears away as the pileus expands, leaving pieces like white felt adhering to the crimson covering. This Amanita muscifera is highly poisonous, and is used to make fly-poison in Britain; but it is employed in Kamschatka to make an intoxicating drink. It thus exhibits a peculiarity, not rare in its class, of the qualities being wonderfully altered by climate. Many species, deleterious in their properties here, are wholesome in Italy, and the Fuegians are nourished by some which to us would be wholly poisonous. A nearly-allied species (Amanita rubescens) with a brown pileus, but flecked in youth with scraps of its discarded volva, I have found in Kent and Yorkshire; its flesh, the substance between the pileus and the lamellæ, turns red when it is broken: hence its name.

The spores in this portion of the Agaric group are white. You may procure them for examination by leaving the young plant on a piece of coloured paper, where it will shed its spores. It is easy to examine them with a botanical microscope; their shape and colour at once decide the species. Under fir-trees in autumn I have frequently seen crowds of stately Fungi of this Agaric type, the brown coating of the pileus torn into shreds. This is the Lepiota Rachodes; it is round at first, but on reaching maturity the pileus expands, and becomes flat; the thin shreds, which formed a velum (veil) in youth, stretching from the edge of the pileus to the centre of the stem, still hang as a frill on the latter, and, along with the white spores, fix its position early in the Agaric group. The White Agaric, which grows in clusters on tan in hothouses, is another Lepiota.

In similar localities to that chosen by the L. Rachodes, we find the mouse-coloured Tricholoma humilis; the folds are prettily turned where they meet the stem, and tinged with the colour of the pileus, and the velum is hairy. Frequently in woods and field-borders groups of smaller violet-coloured Agarics are seen, the pileus covered with plum-like bloom. The lamellæ are also violet-tinted, and the pileus often twists into eccentric shapes. This is the Clitocybe laccatus. I remember being greatly attracted by a group of the salmon-coloured Collybia

Fusipes, growing out of the bole of a tree in an enclosed part of Hope Park, near Edinburgh. I fee'd a "laddie" to climb for them, and admired their umber inflated stems greatly when in my hand. A few of the stems were long, and had burst with the wet, showing their hollow structure. The lamellæ were pale yellow. An allied species (C. Velutipes) is common on stumps in woods, the velvet-like texture of its dark-brown stem forming a pleasing contrast with its orange cupola-shaped pileus; while myriads of the fragile mouse-coloured Mycana alcalinus cluster on the same rotten stump, quivering in every breeze, and perishing by dozens as you try to gather them. Some of this numerous clan of Agarics are without a stem altogether, as the little lead-coloured Pleurotus applicatus, and the pale-brown biting Panus stypticus.

Turning from the Agarics with white spores, we are next presented with a group bearing salmon spores. The little brown "toadstool," with pileus no bigger than your finger end, which you find on lawns, Naucaria melinoides, is one of these. Our friend the Mushroom, Psalliota campestris, has purplish brown spores. It is said that sheep eat the Mushroom; and I remember being earnestly warned by a countryman not to eat any Fungus I gathered in a field where sheep were; “for it can't be the right kind, or they would have eaten it up," he said. The merits of this friendly Mushroom are numerous; to us it alone redeems its tribe from a great part of the stigma resting upon it. Stewed or made into ketchup, or pickled in the infant or "button" state, who can praise it sufficiently! And then the pleasure of going out mushroom-gathering, basket in hand and emulation in the heart; of wandering through the breezy pastures, reconnoitring from the tops of gates for white cupolas, and being quizzed unmercifully should they turn out to be lumps of chalk!

Who is there that has not noticed the cone-like Fungi springing suddenly after rain upon the lawn, often pressed so closely together as to push each other sadly out of shape? These vary from the typical Agarics in their lamellæ melting away, so that the spores flow away in the liquid substance of the folds, leaving, in the place of the Coprinus atramentarius, a mere stain, as of ink, upon the sward. Closely allied to this, though varying greatly in appearance, is a tiny Fungus which takes up its abode on the plaster of dwelling-houses. I was much puzzled on one occasion to find a starry network on my bedroom ceiling; it was as if threads extended in every direction from a round nucleus in the centre, like a flattened pea, and branches issuing from the threads, and interlacing wove the whole into a circular network. The little plant in the centre was the Coprinus radians; the branches, etc., were mycelium (spawn)

thrown out to draw moisture from the air for that nourishment which the plaster could not afford. A watery texture marks the sub-genus Hygrophorus, but they do not melt entirely away like their relative the Coprinus.

The green-tinted Agarics which adorn the sward upon the chalk downs belong to this family (H. psittacinus), as do also the gaudy orange conical ones which flourish in meadows in autumn (H. conicus). These same chalk downs are the grand locale for the Marasmias oreades, the mysterious cause of those fairy rings concerning which so much romance and sentiment has been told and sung. It is a pale, unassuming looking fungus, and perfectly wholesome; but who would like to dine on fairy rings! Surely, as a just punishment, they would be bewitched, and, at the least, pixy-led. Yet this very plant used to be sold in a dry state in Covent Garden Market.

Varying from the true Agarics in having the hymenium in reins, instead of upon lamella, the group of Cantharellus is yet very nearly allied to them. The Chanterelle, once so much prized, and still used in France, is frequent in our woods from Berkshire to the Northern Highlands. The groups, so variable in form but so rich in colour, of the Cantharellus cibarius form attractive objects beneath the overshadowing oaks, while the darker hue and elegant form of the C. cornucopioides wins enthusiastic admiration from the naturalist wandering in autumn and early winter among the mossy woods of Herefordshire - it is well named after the cornucopia, which its contour exactly resembles. The rare Lentinus flabelliformis, stemless and with fleshy lamellæ, once rewarded my search in Wiltshire, growing round the base of a turnstile post upon the greensand formation. The Lenzites betulinus, similar in form, but of a corky texture, is frequent upon stumps of birch in that same neighbourhood; its zones of olive and green and its downy pileus render it an ornament to the otherwise naked stumps. There is a group of Agarics with milky juice; these are very poisonous. I remember blistering my lips with only touching them with the biting juice. Old Gerarde recommends us to confine ourselves to the "Meadow Mushroom" for dietetic purposes, adding, "It is ill trusting any of the rest;" and until our knowledge is more extended, and our observation more on the alert, I think we had better follow his counsel, although we cannot agree with his quotation from Pliny, that "mushrooms grow in showers of raine, they come of the slime of trees."

In the next group to the Agarics we find the hymenium in tubes or pores, more or less broken; hence the group receives the name Polyporei. We find Fungi, yellow, brown, white, or tawny; and, upon administering our accustomed kick, we see a spongy under-surface appear, instead of the lamella of the Agaric.

These Fungi we call Sap-balls, or Boleti. One is edible (B. edulis), and of a pale colour; another is very poisonous and dark tinted (B. luridus); the apricot-coloured (B. piperatus) is peppery; and we cannot recommend the flavour of the gay yellow one (B. luteus). In the Boletus family the tubes of the hymenium can be separated from one another. Not so in the next family, that of the Polypores. These grow occasionally with stems, as in the P. varius, which I found adorning pollard willows on the banks of the Wye; elegant in form, like a scallop-shell, with the hinge prolonged into a stalk, and the pileus shaded richly with umber and crimson; but more frequently they are stemless, growing like shelves and brackets on tree-stumps. Of these the P. squamosus is a very handsome member, spreading to the size of from one to two feet, blotched with brown, and forming a remarkable object on the bole of ash-trees. A very firm, woody, fragrant species grows in the form of a bracket on old willows. I have found it in Wiltshire, Herefordshire, and Kent-P. salicinus. A minute plant of this family, P. abietinus, adorns fir posts, &c. It grows flat at first, and then the edges curl over in the form of frills; the edges and the hymenium are violet, the pileus white and cottony. Some species, as P. annosus, grow on the ground; the hymenium white, and the edges, which presently turn up, a full chestnut brown.

Few old stumps in woods or on lawns are quite destitute of the zoned frills of the Merulius Corium. The pores here are not equally distributed over the surface, but are arranged in branching lines. In texture it resembles parchment. This plant is brother to the Dry-rot, which so constantly brings ruin in its wake; terrible, less in its perfect state, with fully developed pileus and hymenium, than in its spawn condition, when it eats into wood, rendering it rotten and crumbling, and showing no respect for the most honoured edifice. "It is because the Dry-rot has got in," was the answer returned to my question, why the wall of the curator's house at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens was taken down; and on putting a similar query to workmen engaged in a Kentish church, I was again told, "The Dry-rot has eaten away both the pews and the flooring." From the perfect plant drops of moisture exude; hence its name, M. lachrymans. They might well be tears of repentance shed over its many misdeeds.

The Fistulina hepatica, with its shapeless form and bloodred pileus, is found, in the later summer months, growing on trees. It has been recently found in Longleat Park, Wiltshire, and Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire. In this genus the pores are not only separable, as in Boletus, but distinct and tubiform. It forms wholesome food; and I have known persons who have eaten it without bad results, and who describe it as resembling

veal cotelette. All credit to them for their enterprise; for we must own it does not look tempting.

Woods both in Kent and Wilts have furnished me with the pale salmon-coloured Hydnum. Here the hymenium is in spines, which cluster closely over the under-surface, like miniature stalactites from the roof of a cavern. It forms an excellent dish, being likened to oysters. I have also gathered it in September on the banks of Loch Lomond. Another pretty species, smaller, and shaded with madder, grows on mossy banks in Kent (H. zonetum); while many stemless kinds grow as incrustations upon decaying sticks. Upon rotting pales and stumps we see richly-tinted patches, some brilliantly purple, others fine umber brown and velvety; these are Corticium cæruleum and Stereum hirsutum. In these plants the hymenium is quite even, not disposed on lamellæ, or in tubes, or veins, or spines, which feature characterizes the Auriculini group.

The Clavaria are among the most attractive of our fungi, carrying their hymenium in the upper part of their branches. Some grow as bunches of yellow coral among the low grass on our downs (C. fastigiata); others are equally branched, and snowwhite (C. cristata), and frequent woods; whilst the amethyst tint of the lilac species favours moorlands. I found it on the heights above Oban.

The last group in the hymenium order is the Tremellini. These fungi have the fruit-bearing part mingled with their jelly-like substance. The Tremella foliosa resembles a plaited mould of port-wine jelly; the T. mesenterica, orange jelly; and the T. albida might be a piece of semi-transparent blancmange. They grow on dead wood in damp places. The Exidia glandulosa, shaped like half a huge black mulberry, and the Hirneola auricula Judæ, of ear-like resemblance, both belong to the Tremellini; the former growing on dead oak, and the latter on living elder, and lasting through the winter months.

Some years ago a fungus dinner was suggested in the pages of "Chambers's Journal." Fistulina was to stand as beefsteak, young Puff-balls for sweetbread, Lactarius deliciosus for lamb chops, and Hydnum for oysters!

There are also other utilitarian members among our friends. The Boletus edulis is much prized on the Continent, and has occasionally been cultivated with success. The Polyporus fomentarius forms the amadou of commerce, "German tinder" being merely thin slices of the fungus steeped in saltpetre and dried. The Ostyacks use Polyporus ignarius as an ingredient in snuff, and the Pietra funghaia is merely hard clay penetrated with the mycelium of P. tuberaster.