Examination of Fungi. 59 



contains, but it may be stated that dried fungi^ unless 

 accompanied by notes made from tlie fresh specimen, 

 including habitat and locality, may be considered 

 in most instances as perfectly useless, consequently 

 never waste time in collecting' and drying more speci- 

 mens, especially of the fleshy fungi, than you can care- 

 fully examine in the fresh state. No collection of 

 fungi can be considered complete unless accompanied 

 by specimens preserved in alcohol or methylated 

 spirit. Of course there is a limit to specimens in spirit, 

 on account of the space taken up by bottles, yet 

 typical species of the various types in different stages 

 of development will be found exceedingly instructive. 



Examination of Fungi. 



The most important naked 03^0 and pocket-lens 

 characters to be noted in the fresh specimen have 

 already been enumerated, but no fungus can be con- 

 sidered to have been thoroughly examined, even from 

 the specific standpoint, until its microscopic structure 

 has been investigated. At the present day the specific 

 characters of all the minute forms depend almost 

 entirely on microscopic evidence, but even amongst 

 the agarics, species that are so closely allied as to be 

 frequently confounded from the superficial Friesian 

 means of determination, are often clearly separated by 

 microscopic characters, snch characters being usually 

 furnished by those portions of the sporophore forming 

 the hymenium. In agarics the relative size and form 

 of the spores, absence or presence of cystidia, which 

 also vary much in size and form, and are constant in 



