SWEETBREAD MUSHROOMS. 97 



this faith, it has always been felt to be incumbent 

 upon us to utter a note of warning whenever the 

 subject would justify it. Even now, with maturer 

 experience, we are not disposed to withdraw our 

 suspicions, or relax our warnings. It is not that the 

 deleterious properties reside in the colour of the 

 spores, which we do not assume, but the presence of 

 other elements in the fungi themselves, exhibited in 

 some instances by rapid putrefaction, and in many 

 by a strong nitrous odour, in which the danger 

 lies. The colour of the spores alone is not a 

 safe basis for any conclusion, since some of those 

 with white spores are amongst the most virulent ; and 

 yet we do not condemn white-spored agarics in a 

 mass. In this instance we simply take advantage of 

 one feature as a simple means of indicating a 

 suspicious group, instead of resorting to scientific 

 names indicating special genera. Experience has 

 shown that certain groups appear to be, for some 

 occult reason, more generally injurious than others, 

 with but a few solitary exceptions, and we take 

 advantage of any recognisable feature which will 

 indicate that group ; and in this case the most 

 available one is the colour of the spores. 



Notwithstanding this general character of the pink 

 spored agarics, we have in two or three well defined 

 species remarkable exceptions to the rule, and it is 

 to these that the present chapter is devoted. This 

 only proves that the colour of the spores is not the 



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