Literary and Philosophical Society of St. Andrews. 129 



show in many of the Italian market-places. These pollard blocks con- 

 tinue to bear from twelve to fourteen years ; I saw a row of them 

 in the Botanical Garden at Naples which after this period were still 

 productive, though less frequently and of fewer Agarics at a crop. 

 The practice of rearing funguses from the poplar is not modern : 

 Dioscorides knew, for he tells us, that if we bark the white or black 

 poplar, cutting the bark into pieces and covering it with horse-dung, 

 an excellent kind of fungus will spring up and continue to bear 

 throughout the year. By way of comment to which passage, Mat- 

 thiolus adds, that a little leaven will produce an abundant crop in 

 four days. Another fungus which I have myself reared (Polyporus 

 avellanus) is to be procured by singeing over a handful of straw a 

 block of the cobnut tree which is then to be watered and put by. In 

 about a month the funguses make their appearance, which are quite 

 white, of from two to three inches in diameter, and excellent to eat, 

 while their profusion is sometimes so great as entirely to hide the 

 wood from which they spring. All blocks of this nut wood do not 

 bear. Professor Sanguinetti informs me that the peasants in the 

 Abruzzi, who bring in these logs, know perfectly which will succeed 

 and which will not ; a knowledge, he adds, to which the closest at- 

 tention during all the years that I have been employed by the Papal 

 Government as superintendent of the fungus market has not enabled 

 me to attain/' 



Many other passages of general interest will be found dispersed 

 through the work, and those who look for especial information will 

 not often be disappointed. The truffles alone, though one of the 

 most interesting groups of fungi, whether regarded as objects of 

 commerce or on account of their curious and multifarious structure, 

 form an exception. 



We cordially recommend this work in connexion with the larger 

 one of Mrs. Hussey to the attentive notice of our readers. We do 

 not indeed exactly understand why Dr. Badham's obligations to that 

 lady are not more particularly noticed. Her name does not appear 

 on the plates, though far the greater part of the figures are due to 

 her pencil. Other obligations of a minor character from another 

 quarter ought also we think to have been acknowledged, but we 

 would rather suppose that in either case there has been some acci- 

 dental omission. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF ST. ANDREWS. 



April 5, 1847. — Dr. Reid gave an account of observations on the 

 development of the Medusa, and exhibited the animals to the 

 Society. 



He recalled to the attention of the Society the account which he 

 gave of the structure and habits of the larvae of the Medusae on a 

 former occasion. In the remarks already printed in the Society's 

 ' Transactions,' it was stated by Dr. Reid, that he had kept these 

 animals alive at home from September 1845 to the end of July 1846, 



