GROWING about HALIFAX. 63 



AGARICUS Jitpitatus, pileo fubcampa?iulato levi, lamellis LXXI. 

 Jlipitague violaceis. Hudjbn Angl. 612, 8. . ametbyftinut 



AMETHYST AGARIC, 



TAB. LXIII. 



' I V HE root is brown, roundifh, thicker than the flem, and 

 ■*- furnifhed with a great number of grey dawny fibres, of a 

 mould-like fubflance. 



The flem is fiftular, brittle, often crooked or bent in various 

 directions, about the thicknefs of a goofe quill, and is a little 

 fwelled juft under the pileus ; while the plant is young it is of 

 a reddifh purple, and covered with a bloomy dawn or powder, 

 afterwards changes to a fordid brown, becomes twifted and 

 fometimes wrent ; the height is four or five inches, and fre- 

 quently three or four roots are entangled together by their 

 fibres. 



The gills are in three feries, irregularly waved on the edges, 

 grofs, brittle, and few ; they are broatiefl at their bafe, where 

 they terminate in a claw, which is inferted into the top of the 

 frem, but in the laft flages of the plant, when the rim of the 

 pileus is elevated, the claw breaks, and the gills adhere to the 

 pileus only ; they are purple, and covered like the flem with a 

 bloomy powder. 



The pileus is deflitute of flefh, from one to two inches di- 

 ameter ; at firfl convex, the rim contracted and waved, after- 

 wards becomes irregularly horizontal, at laft the margin turns 

 up, becomes lacerated, changes from a purple to a brownifh 

 flraw colour, and at laft falls and diffolves in a brown turbid 

 gelly. 



Grows plentifully in moifl, fleep, rocky woods, about 

 Halifax, and continues in fucceffion from Augufl to Novem- 

 ber. 



K 2 



