Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate LIX. 



AGARICUS FLEXUOSUS, Persoon. 



Flexuous Milhy Agaric. 

 Series Leucosporus. Sub-genus Galorrheus.' 



Spec. Char. Agaricus flexuosus. Cfespitose or solitary. Pileus from foui' to eight inches broad, crisped 

 and waved, hard, rigid, and brittle, very u'regular, in youth freqviently folded inwards, often deformed and scarcely 

 rising above the soil, in age infundibuliform, the margin very slightly involute ; zoned, more or less ochraceous, 

 viscid when moist. Flesh white, milk watery white, iusupportably and instantly acrid. Gills nearly of the same 

 colour at the pileus, but of a more rufescent tinge, in age they have a shot eifect from the paler spores ; very much 

 forked and anastomosing, owing to the intermediate veins and iiTegular compression of parts of the pileus. Spores 

 ochraceous not pure white. Stem short and thick, blunt, white, very minutely downy, though occasionally quite 

 smooth, fu'm, generally solid, but in irregular specimens it has cavernous spaces in the substance. 

 Agakicus flexuosus, Persoon, Berkdaj. 



Hah. In pastures, under bushes. July, August, and September. 



The Agarics, classed under the head Galorrheus or milk yielding, considered as a class, have white 

 spores, but there are two or three exceptions, the spores of which when collected in a body shew a decidedly 

 ochraceous tint ; in all other respects, however, they conform to the particular characters of the division in 

 wliicli they are placed ; and if the student should object to the arrangement of Agarics by the colour of their 

 spores, because a few individuals are at variance with it, — the answer is easy, no rule can be absolutely free 

 from exceptions, a cream or ochre cast is no material difference in the colour of spores taken as the test of a 

 large class, wliich agree in all other botanical particulars, and in no case is the discrepancy of colour so strong 

 as to cause confusion with other divisions. As a mode of distinguisliing an individual with certainty, there 

 is no test like the colour of the spores. The very Agaric under consideration is one of those that have the 

 spores of a pallid ochi-e tint ; but this palUd ochre or cream-colour is very different from the rich reddish 

 ochre of the Cortinarius Funguses, the rosy-ochre of the series Hyporhodeus, or the ferruginous brown of 

 the series Derminus. It must also be remarked, that no Agaric has the spores white in one situation and 

 yellow in another ; it is the one fixed invariable point about them, that differ as they may under circum- 

 stances, though they may be distorted, diseased, and sportive in any other way, their dust when collected 

 by reversal on a glass, is always precisely the same. The gills do undergo a change which renders them 

 alone a fallacious guide in classification ; many Agarics have been named and described twice over from 



' From yoKa, milk, and peu, to flow. Veil none. Stem naked, firm, sub-equal, diffused into the pileus. 

 Pileus fleshy, firm, piano-depressed, umbilicate, margin even, when young involute. GUIs unequal, often forked, 

 narrow, attenuated behind, adnato-decurrent. The whole plant abounding with a milky juice. Large or middle- 

 sized, persistent, frequently acrid Fungi, growing on the ground. 



