the surface of the pileus in drying has changed grievously ; the purple has flown, the laky-bufF is off too, 

 a couple of dull dowdy, buffish-purplish, or brownish individuals remain. 



" All that's bright must fade, 

 The brightest still the fleetest," 

 and certainly there are not many instances in which the alteration is more striking than in A. laccatus ; 

 in a few hours the specimens, hoarded to exhibit as " so lovely " to some fellow-student, are sought for, and 

 who could have anticipated the change? Provoking, too, if wanted for the pencil. In the accom- 

 panying drawing the prostrate one only has any pretension to perfection, the others are already "passes," 

 having lost their pristine beauty before so fugitive a thing could be transferred to paper. 



We have supposed a case of extremes above, but there are many intermediate states of A. laccatus 

 wliich soften down the glaring difference between them; nothing can prove, however, how apparently 

 different examples may be, than the fact that Withering has described tliis one fungus under three or four 

 names. The title " farinaceous," which Bolton and others have given to this Agaric, is suggested by its 

 powdered mealy appearance when the abundant white spores are developed ; not from the smell of flour, 

 although that has been supposed; it has no decided scent of newly ground meal, like A. Geonjii, the Orcella, 

 &c. In ordinary cases the smell is not remarkable, but once a quantity of the amethyst variety was 

 collected, wliich had a very powerful odour of gai'lic when dried ; the same species grew in very regular rings, 

 not in close ranks like A. Oreades, but in small groups consisting of three or four, at distances of an inch 

 or two apart, but these patches preserving an annular figure as a whole. 



It is probably innocuous, though not tempting enough to have hitherto induced us to try its quaHties 

 as food ; there is no notice of its being used in any work on Agarics. When water-soaked the youthful 

 Araethystinus looks nearly black, and the buff kind, orange-lake ; attention to this fact of being satm'ated 

 with moisture, or the contrary, must be paid in all examinations of species, and due allowance made for 

 change of colom- or consistence accordingly. 



