xxii INTRODUCTION. 



imbibe a fufficient fupply of moifture, it often falls and diffolves with- 

 out lacerating. 



Colour, in Agarics, (efpecially in the perufal of fuch authors as have 

 given defcriptions without figures) has been another fource of much per- 

 plexity; for though the colours in the refpective fpecies are not very 

 inconftant, yet they are of fuch mixed and indeterminate hues, and 

 thofe of one fpecies fo nearly verging upon thofe of another, that it is 

 little lefs than impoflible, to convey clear and diflinct ideas of them, by 

 words alone, either in our own or any other language. For this reafon 

 I have been particularly careful in mixing the colours, both in making 

 the drawings and colouring the prints, to imitate the precife hue of the 

 object, as near as I poflibly could. 



The part of an Agaric which is extended from the Item to the rim 

 of the hat, and which authors diftinguifh by the term velo, I have 

 named in Englifh curtain rather than veil; becaufe the latter has been al- 

 ready made ufe of, in our language, to denote an hood or covering on 

 the fructification of moft mofles, which is of a quite different figure from 

 the curtain of an Agaric, and of which the word veil contains a more apt 

 idea. — The ufe of this part, in one as well as the other, is to fecure and 

 conceal thofe hidden operations of nature, which are neceflary to the pro- 

 duction of perfect feeds ; but in the mofTes it is a clofe hood, in the 

 Agarics it is an extended membrane. 



The cover, which in fome fpecies furrounds the root, and inwraps 

 the pileus in its infant ftate, is by Battarra, Scopoly, Scboeff'er, Hallar, and 

 others, termed volva. The excellent Linnaeus, it feems, did not confider 

 the volva and curtain as difiinct objects, for in the fpecific characters of 

 the Agaricus wufcarius, we find, Jlipite volvato*-, in the defcription of 

 Slgaricus extintlorus-, bafi crajj'us nudus abfque volva-f. The term Volva, 

 is made ufe of in the prefent work, becaufe no Englifh word occurred to 

 me, which I thought equally expreffive, of the figure and ufe of that 



furrounding 



* Sp. PI. 164.0 .  f Flora Suecica 1196. 



