HAKDWICKE'S SC lEN CE- GOS SIP. 



193 



COLLECTING AND PEESEEVING. 



No. VIII.-FUNGI. 

 By Wokthington G. Smith, F.L.S. 



ITIT 



the fogs and 

 raius of autumn 

 the fungologist's 

 harvest begins. A 

 few fungi (large 

 and small) apper- 

 tain to the spring, 

 and some species 

 may be found in every month 

 of the year ; but it is not till 

 September has well set in, or 

 October is reached, that the 

 glut of fungi is really upon 

 us. Fungi may generally be 

 met with in abundance for 

 three months of the year ; viz., 

 from the latter lialf of Sep- 

 tember till the middle of 

 December, the month of Oc- 

 tober taking pre-eminence for 

 producing the greatest abun- 

 dance of species, A season of moderate heat and 

 rain is the most productive, for an excessive 

 amount of either dryness or moisture appears to 

 destroy the fecundity of the mycelium, which it 

 must always be remembered is alive and at work 

 (underground) the whole of the year ; for, as a 

 matter of course, this year's fungi is produced from 

 last year's spores. These spores are set free in 

 autumn, and at once vegetate and form masses 

 of mycelium, from which next year's crop must 

 spring; just as the seeds of our wild annuals are 

 self-sown at the fall of each year and first germinate 

 at that season. It is a great mistake to suppose 

 that Agarics and Boleti wait till the leaves fall, so 

 that they may prey upon them ; for, as a rule, the 

 larger fungi never live upon the leaves of the same 

 year as that in \yhich they (the fungi) come up ; 

 fungi live upon the fallen leaves of the previous 

 No. 93. 



autumn. The spring and summer months will some- 

 times prove very productive, especially after stormy 

 weather; but the collector must always bear in 

 mind that fungi, like all other things, have their 

 seasons. I have known the fungus-harvest quite 

 over by the end of August, and I have also known 

 it not come in before December : it depends entirely 

 upon a certain amount of atmospheric heat and 

 moisture. A damp summer and stormy August will 

 produce the crop at the beginning of September ; 

 but a dry autumn, without much rain till November, 

 will delay the fungus-crop till Christmas. Some 

 species appear regularly hcice a year from the same 

 mycelium ; once after the rains of March and April, 

 and again in October. This is the case with Copmius 

 atramentanus, which I have growing (originally 

 from spores) iu a bed of my own garden. 



It is useless to go out specially to collect fungi, 

 either during the dry hot weather of summer or 

 the frosts of winter : it sometimes, however, 

 happens, that odd fungi may be found here and 

 there, in out-of-the-way places, such as the sides of 

 open cellars and sawpits, under bridges, on pros- 

 trate logs in streams, in damp outhouses, or about 

 old water-butts, &c. ; therefore I never go out with- 

 out two or three old seidlitz-powder boxes, some 

 thin paper, and a strong knife, in case any waifs 

 and strays should fall in my way. I have sometimes 

 found good species in a friend's dust-bin or cistern, 

 or upon the sides of a public-house open cellar. I 

 once found an agaricus on the cornice of London 

 Bridge, to secure which I had to get over the 

 parapet, and was nearly being taken into custody as 

 one tired of life ; another time I found a colony of 

 Coprinus domesticus upon a friend's scullery wall, 

 and a Peziza upon my brother's ceiling. Moral: 

 Fungologists' pockets should, at all times, contain 

 one or two small boxes for securing stray and 

 erratic members of the fungus family. 



