NOTES BY RURICOLA. 4 H) 



perceive: but perhaps the foregoing particulars will enable you to 

 identify the animal : and I beg the favour of a marginal note informing 

 me whether this conjecture is right, and to what species it is probable 

 that the two other nests belong. 



Dr. Withering in his " Arrangement of British Plants," speaking of 

 individuals of the common mushroom (Agaricus campestris) as " dif- 

 fering very much in size/' adds, " I gathered one whose pileus 

 measured nine, inches over." It may, therefore, perhaps be worth 

 noticing, that one was lately brought to me, measuring eleven inches 

 over by the longest diameter, and ten and a half by the shortest. The 

 stem was nine inches high, and large in proportion. It grew at the 

 side of a meadow, under the shade of firs and other trees: and on 

 being broiled proved very good for eating. 



I should be glad to be made acquainted through your pages with the 

 scientific name * of a small marine animal, culled by sailors the little 

 man of war. It is in length about an inch and a quarter, and about a 

 quarter of an inch in breadth : consisting of a flat, hardish, glutinous, 

 purple substance, which floats upon the water; and a thin light- 

 coloured membrane, which is capable of being erected, and kept per- 

 pendicular to the former. A specimen, Avhich I possess, was found in 

 the autumn of 1831, together with a numberless multitude of others, 

 on the northern coast of the county of Antrim, not far from the village 

 of Ballintoy, and onwards to the little seaport of Portrush. From 

 inquiries on the spot, addressed to various persons in the habit of 

 frequenting that shore, and particularly to a clergyman who had passed 

 many years there, and had been very observant of the natural productions 

 of the neighbourhood, I could not learn that this little animal had ever 

 been noticed there before. A naval officer immediately recognised it 

 as familiarly known to him by the name of the little man of war, 

 which, however he said that he had never before seen within three 

 hundred miles of land. 



Holy wood, Ireland, Aug. 22, 1833. 



* Evidently a Medusa. I cannot pronounce with certainty either on the species 

 of tins or on those of the wasps. 



