lie could fiiid no description of it, although very remarkable : " it is of a uniform buff hue, the colour of the 

 belly of the chamois or fawn ; four or five inches liigh, the pileus ' mamelone ' in the centre, four or five 

 inches wide, dry, even, smooth as satin. The flesh wliite, rather soft in the centre, stem cyhndricaJj 

 stuffed, of half an inch diameter, three or four inches high, the base tuberous or bulbous, with Uttle downy 

 roots. When fresh it smells strongly of garlic, but after a time this odour is dissipated, and it finally 

 changes to that of bitter almonds. It is found in Switzerland and in Franche Comte, and sold with the 

 Mousseron de Suisse {Pnmulws or A. yeorgii) ; it is perfectly wholesome." (Paulet.) 



" In hedges &c. ; sometimes the lip is not turned over, but wine-glass-shaped. Smell like ahnonds, 

 clean, hard, smooth, even-coloured like buff-kid; gills the same colour." (r.R. Hants specimens). 

 Given a picturesque giant oak, wliich might remember Csesar, only probably he never came to Keston, and 

 fancy a circle round it of these fairy Tazzas ; all perfect in form, and growing distinctly at about two feet 

 apart in a ring of thirty feet in diameter ; with fine deer-grass and green mosses at their feet, and the 

 feathers of the fern waving over all ; the situation is the verge of a lofty inland promontory, where the air 

 is as bracing and pure as that of the Swiss mountains themselves, and perhaps as you breathe it, and look 

 on aU the beauty round you, you will consider the pure quality of the Agarics accounted for, compared 

 ■nith such sites as the fat meadows of the Itchin or the foul woods, aptly styled ' Scrubs.' Wien free from 

 insect life, this fiuigus dries remarkably well, corrugating fi-om the margin inwards in regular concentric 

 wrinkles ; if placed erect in a glass of water, as much as ten days after gathering, it swells gradually as the 

 liquid is imbibed by the stem, till restored to its origiiral dimensions ; but tliis experiment cannot be 

 repeated. 



All the examples we have studied had elastically solid stems diffused into the pileus, but perhaps the 

 central texture is loose in large specimens growing with great rapidity, and if so, it will remove a discre- 

 pancy between A. pileolarins as we observed it, and as Pries describes it, under the head A. geotnqms, and 

 his A. maximus. In consistency and flavour as a culinary article, it is nearest A. oreades. 



