1900] Webster, — An afternoon outing for toadstools IQI 
AN AFTERNOON OUTING FOR TOADSTOOLS. 
H. WEBSTER. 
THE rainy days of the second week in August were just in time to 
revive the sinking hopes of the constant few among the members of 
the Boston Mycological Club, who had been striving, despite the 
parching drought of July, to find toadstools enough to maintain the 
interest of the regular Saturday exhibitions at Horticultural Hall. 
They had almost given up their efforts, which had been rewarded by 
only a few of the commonest species, so often exhibited that visitors 
to the exhibitions began to tire of them. Memories of moister seasons 
of a few years ago, when the last week of July saw the tables gay with 
seventy-five to a hundred species, seemed unreal, and unreliable as a 
basis for present expectation. For such is the way with the fleshy 
fungi. Given moisture, they fruit abundantly ; denied it, they fruit 
stingily or not at all, and leave us to wait perhaps until the year 
comes round again for a sight of the full range of species. 
Coming from the New Hampshire hills, where, in spite of lack 
of rain, toadstools had been gathered in great variety, if not in great 
abundance, some of us were unwilling to accept the prevalent attitude 
of discouragement. Inviting, therefore, a despairing friend or two, 
we started on the afternoon of August tenth, with the mercury in the 
nineties, for the Blue Hill region. 
Though formerly somewhat inaccessible, except about Blue Hill 
itself, this region is now opened to visitors in its eastern extent by the 
electric railroad, which, leaving the Neponset River at Milton Lower 
Mills, passes up Randolph Avenue directly through the heart of the 
Metropolitan Reservation, between Chickatawbut and Hancock Hills. 
At various points along the line the fungus hunter may find good col- 
lecting, for there are numerous low slopes and hollows that are moist 
at almost any time, and the swamps and bogs lying south of the range, 
aboutGreat Pond in Braintree, and tothe east of Ponkapog,can be reached 
by a longer ride and in the latter case by a moderately long walk. 
The higher stony ground, especially where tumbled boulders and 
broken rock lie exposed on southern slopes, should be avoided by 
timid explorers. For such places are inhabited or haunted by rattle- 
snakes, that still are numerous enough to make a word of caution 
necessary. ‘Though numbers of these reptiles are killed every year, 
they still thrive in limited areas, and the chance of meeting a strag- 
