glories of the valley ! We admire no lurneps — vve count no sheep — we do not care whether it be wheat 

 or bai'ley which sprouts in tender green blades between the sheltering flints — we are looking for Morels, 

 and watching the great green rings where we expect, by and bye, to collect bushels of A. Georgii ! Or it 

 is autumn, and the grain is garnered ; stubble is unpleasant to ladies' ancles, and its ragged edges skirting 

 our grassy balk, catch and finish " the last flounce of summer," but who can be troubled with such petty 

 cares ? — not we. The partridge loves that slope as well as we do, and startles us with a sudden wliir-r-r-r. 

 The pheasant stealthily creeps into covert, his ghstening long tail shining among the dark Scotch firs ; he 

 scorns to hasten his walk into a run, for he knows we are not enemies — he fears a gun, but Mycologists, 

 though armed with knives of awful dimensions, \iith trowels and wrenching tools, are not meditating 

 injury to any living tiling ; and well-filled baskets contain the results of harmless, painless sport. 



Many a day through the showery summer and early autumn, we sought and found treasures in- 

 numerable, several new to EngUsh seekers — but at last we grew weary of great Infundibuliform Agarics of 

 the Class Lactarius, which met the eye in every direction and were almost the only things left ; till one 

 day a starthng sight presented itself — an immense ring, apparently of some of that family, which do not in 

 general affect such a mode of growth. It proved to be a species, the smaller members of wliich exactly 

 possessed the configuration of A. Listen (the A.piperatus of the Flora Vol.). There were the gUls, "fine 

 like the teeth of an ivory comb," the broadly inroUed flisc, the stout firm texture, the same hue — we were 

 obliged to taste in order to decide, and finding it neither milky nor acrid, knew that it must be that rare 

 and esculent Agaric — A. giganteus ; rightly named, for the specimen we have portrayed is rather smaller 

 than nature ; it held three-quarters of a pint ! 



Of the other Agarics with which our present subject can be confounded — A. nellereus is milky and 

 hot, like A. Listen. A. exsuccus has no milk, but has distant crisp gills which are either wlute (not 

 yellowish) or tinged in age with verdigris. A. infundibidiformis, proper, is a delicate wine-glass shaped 

 Agaric, with a reddish buff pUeus and pale cream-coloured or whitish gills ; it is seldom more than 

 two inches broad, and is very fragile and tender, particularly elegant and totally unlike A. giganteus ; 

 there is one large Agaric, however, growing in rings (which has sometimes been supposed a variety of 

 A. Infundibuliformis) this is A. pileolarius wliich we have given before ; and yet another with a waved 

 irregular pileus, nearly akin to the last but with an unpleasant smell, and coarser in all its proportions, 

 this is A. maximus of Fries — both these are more uniformly buff in hue, and have reddish stems ; our 

 ■present subject has no red about it whatever, and its colour is dull, or in fading, dingy white with yellowish 

 stains on the stem, the gills partake of the shade formed from yeUow ochre, not flesh or nankeen colour. 



It is perfectly sweet and very agreeable, but the scent is sometimes scarcely perceptible. It may be 

 eaten with perfect safety in any manner the gastronome prefers — young specimens being selected. 



