Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate XXVI. 



BOLETUS LURIDUS, var,&/.<./... 



Lurid Boletus. 



Spec. Char. B. lueidus, var. Pileus at first convex, nearly hemispherical, at length completely expanded, 

 softly tomentose, like fine kid leather. Tubes free, olivaceous, their orifices at first rich red-brown. Spores oliva- 

 ceous ochre. Stem stained with red but not reticulated, perfectly smooth. The external portions of the fungus 

 not diseoloui-ing when touched, as is usually the case with B. luridus, but turning intensely blue when cut asunder. 

 The stem is also deep blue, not internally red as in the var. B. erythropus. All the various forms of B. hiridus are 

 specious and handsome, but most poisonous. 



Hub. In an upland pasture at Keston. July. 



If beauty were to guide the choice in eating funguses, this very pretty specimen of a Boletus would 

 certainly be selected in preference to the coarse-looking individual preceding it; but this is another instance 

 to add to the many which occur daily, how little superficial observation can be trusted. Those Boletuses 

 which compose the section of Tries " Edules " being generally clumsy and ugly, while among the poisonous 

 " Lnridi " are splendid examples of colouring which must attract the admiration of the eye, if its possessors 

 be denied the estimation of the palate. Whatsoever the poisonous principle may be in funguses, it is not 

 noxious to the larvte of those insects which deposit their eggs in the incipient, almost earth-concealed 

 Boletus or Agaric, so that, hatching with its growth, they find food and shelter during its development, 

 travelling up from below, and forming labyrinthine excavations in the soft flesh of the pileus ; which then 

 sinks in that portion immediately above the stem, and becomes more or less concave instead of convex. 



The mode in which certain apparent accidents produce effects proving the most thoughtful contrivance, 

 cannot be better exemplified than in such a case as this. So long as the immature seminal bodies called 

 spores require shelter and care, the pileus retains its hemispherical form ; but such a form compresses the 

 tubes or gills (as the case may be), so that the ripened dust would be retained instead of scattered to fruc- 

 tify. The engineer to correct this is quietly at work : doubtless he believes that he is only regaling his own 

 palate, and so he is, but while, he feeds and grows strong and lusty, he has sapped the central strength of 

 the fungus, it collapses and sinks down, in that portion above the stem into which he has been mining ; 

 the depression of the centre throws up the margin of the pileus, giving room, and widening the receptacles 

 below, by completely changing the concave to the convex (as in the aged figure in the plate); those spores 

 are then ejected, which were heretofore confined, and we discover that the apparent ravages of the insect 

 conduced, not to the destruction, but to the reproduction, of the plant which nurtured it. Thus are the 

 wonderful ways of the Almighty's beneficence displayed to those who will attend to them ; displayed in the 

 humble despised toadstool, as surely as in the most striking phenomena of nature. 



