nouncing upon them, without the test of the tongue ; there can be no deception then. The syren is mucli 

 more elegant in the ivory gUls, and distinctly mottled, brighter red and wliite. Strange to say, the cold 

 slugs prefer its acrid warmth to the mild, innocent, and most excellent A. lepidus. 



Of that we have not much more to say. If we were to attempt to disentangle the meshes in which 

 the term " TtvAsula " has involved a large party of innocent Agarics, we shoidd be ourselves served as the 

 wasp is, who follows flies into a spider's web. "Ruber," "sanguineus" " rosaceus" — which is which? 

 Let them all be eschewed together ; identification, if not impossible, is one of those enigmas never to be 

 solved; let us content ourselves, then, and leave it to sleep with squaring the circle and perpetual motion. 

 Two Russulas only, as far as our experience goes, which have really any red in their caps, and are also 

 esculent, are of a very dull red — the present A. lepidus, and A. vescus, which we have before described ; the 

 bright carmines and scarlets are meretricious. Another point much in doubt, is the colour of the stem ; 

 we have examined A. emeticus, A. rosaceus, &c., &c., and all our specimens have had brilliantly colom-ed 

 caps but perfectly snow-white stems ; only our duU friend A. lepidus, wearing a pileus which, if it can be 

 styled bonnet rouge at aU, is certainly a shabby-looking one, has a roseate glow or blush upon the stem, 

 which in purity and beauty surpasses all that other Agarics can display. 



We eat them always ; they are of a remarkably pleasant consistency when baked with fresh butter in 

 a covered dish ; and so far from the ajruginose appearance setting us against them, it ought to assure us 

 of the identity of the subject with that esculent Russula to which Fries, in the confusion of old names, 

 wisely gave a new designation — lepida. 



