Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate XVIII. 



AGARICUS DOMESTICUS, BoUon. 



House Agaric. 

 Series Pratella. Subgenus Coprinus. 



Spec. Char. Agaricus dojiesticus. Pileus not membranaceous, but slightly fleshy, thin, ovato-campauiilate, 

 then expanded, two inches broad, obtusely umbonate, undulato-sulcate, squamulose, furfuraceous, fuliginous, the 

 apex reddish-brown, the disc ochraceous or nearly white. GUIs adfixed, close, linear, white when young, then ruddy, 

 at length brown-black from the spores. Stem silky white, two or three inches high, attenuated upwards, often from 

 a broad nodose base by which it attaches itself to various substances, as stone steps, &c. 



Agaricus domesticus, Bolton, Fries, Berkeley, Fersoon. 



Hah. In cellars, damp kitchens, vaults, on decaying wood. Eare ; handsome in the solitary form. 



This pretty Agaric is one of the most delicate aud " touchable " among tlie Coprini ; it is less ejjhe- 

 meral than its nearest relatives ; we watched, during a fortnight, the daily development of some fine speci- 

 mens, growing on a log of rotten wood in a damp cupboard ; from the time that the spores first tinted the 

 gills till decay commenced was five days, and even then the Agarics did not delicjuesce and run off in 

 moisture as those of the same family growing in the soil or dung do. These specimens were tufted from a 

 common centre, the crevice in the wood, therefore had no bulbous excrescence at the base. It will be 

 observed that those which sat for the portrait, growing on a hard horizontal surface (the cellar steps at 

 Tingewick), have the base much extended in a nodose ring ; they also deliquesced sooner in that damj) 

 situation. Our Hayes friends, produced in perfect darkness, were white, only acquiring a slight tinge of 

 umber upon the scales, after being brought into day. The texture of the pileus was more floccose than is 

 usually the case, and till the spores ripened they greatly resembled some of the smaller Lepiotes. When, 

 however, the blackish- b^o^vn dust had appeared upon the giUs, which acquired a red tinge in course of 

 expansion, we hope our least learned pupil must have known that the stranger could not belong to any 

 subgenus of Leucosporm. 



Some of the nearly allied members of the Coprinus family are as pretty as A. domesticus, even more so, 

 in their fragile, transparent beauty. Ephemeral as an insect may be, and named from its life of a day, it 

 lives twenty hours out of the twenty-four longer than Agaricus radiatus, which shrinks into a state of 

 collapse as soon as the sun's rays touch upon it, and is destroyed by a breath, leaving only a slight black 

 film on the fingers, or attached to the filiform stem. A. plicatiUs is almost as evanescent, aud A. ephe- 

 merae speaks for itself. The latter is very beautiful ; the pileus is striate, bluish-grey, with an umber apex, 



