Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate XXX. 



AGARICUS GLAUCOPUS, so^erby. 



Series Cortinaria. Section Phlegmacium. 



Spec. Char. A. glaucopus. Pileus four or five inches across, extremely solid and heavy ; viscid, afterwards 

 fibrillose; compact, when young hemispherical, then considerably flattened, but the incurved margin never entirely 

 expanded; at first veiled in delicate arachnoid threads, arising from the whole length of the stem between the bulb 

 and the usual position of the ring, and attached, not to the extreme edge of the pOeus, but to the more prominent 

 portion above it, thus fonuing a distinct zone around the margin, which is smooth, not fibrUlose, like the rest of the 

 pileus. At first delicate purple, becoming more or less copper-colom-ed, streaked with purple-red, and turning dark 

 where bruised. Flesh thick, fii-m, crisp, white, imt becoming ceerulescent ; taste impleasant, like a turnip or radish, 

 slightly som-, not acrid, nor leaving an astringency on the palate. Gills not at first purple, but pallid, watery-white, 

 afterwards pale cyinamon and discoloured by the spores ; extremely variable in shape, broad, waved, in age 

 serrulate, receding from the stem or adnate in the same individual, but not truly emarginate. Spores reddish- 

 ochre. Stem firm, stout, at first very short, bulbiform, then elongate, three or four inches high, nearly equal, marked 

 with pale lilac, yellowish in age, copiously dusted with the spores ; ii'regularly lioUow. 

 A. GLAUCOPUS, Sowerby, Fries. 



Eab. Under bii-ch-trees on Wickham Common. 



Of the Cortinarious Agarics, Fries, iu his ' Epicrisis/ says, " A vast and truly natural genus, which 

 can only be confounded by a tyro with the Bermini, as a skiDed person at the first glance distinguishes 

 them ; but the species, as for tlie most part happens in natural sections, are so intimately connected that 

 we almost despair of discriminating each of them. They can only be distinguished with certainty wjien 

 young, and in damp weather ; in dry weather, and discoloured by age, the most familiar kinds are no 

 longer recognizable." When to this it is added, that our master himself has in his ' Epicrisis ' given up 

 many before adopted in his ' Systema,' " not daring to determine from dried specimens," the unfortunate 

 pupils may well be in difficulty ; yet, when it is asserted that this immense family forms at least half the 

 Agaric population of the northern woods, we cannot pass them over as an insignificant group, and it 

 behoves those who live where they flourish so freely to make observations not easily carried out in the 

 warmer districts of Europe, where other tribes replace them, unknown to us except tlirough books. The 

 study of the Cortinarious Agarics is assisted by their division into two main sections, Tldegmacium and 

 Myxaciwn; the former being viscid in youth, but not permanently so, and possessing arachnoid veins; the 

 latter, clothed in slime instead of cobweb-like tissue. The subdivisions of these two classes are intricate. 

 A. glaucopus of Fries is ranged under the Scauri, but our specimens difi'er in a few trifling particulars from 

 his species. The discrepancies, however, are still greater with aU the others ; and there we must leave it 

 for the present, satisfied with liaving represented faithfully the individual before us, whose portrait can 



