The Irish Naturalist, [ Jan. 



FUNGI FROM BRACKENSTOWN, CO. DUBLIN. 



BY K. J. M'WEKNEY, M.A., M.D. 



(Excursion of the Dublin Naturalists' Field Glub, 5th October, 1895.) 

 When, after many hours of sorting and dissecting and mount- 

 ing and gazing down through the microscope, and measuring 

 of spores and comparing of authorities, there confronted me at 

 last the repulsive-looking list herewith presented, I conceived 

 the idea of writing something which might render it intelli- 

 gible to the large majority of Irish field-naturalists, and 

 prevent it from remaining a useless monument of cacophonous 

 terminology. 



I am hardly entitled, however, to use the term cacophonous 

 in connection with the first part of the list. For this com- 

 prises the Agaricini, the most highly organised of all the 

 Fungi — the division which has been classified by the illustrious 

 Swedish botanist, BHas Fries, who was certainly one of the 

 most skilful inventors of well-sounding generic names the 

 world has ever seen. Fries' classification of the mushroom- 

 tribe is a triumph of ingenuity. Taking as his criterion the 

 colour of the spores, he divided the hundreds of toadstool- 

 species, which had hitherto lain inextricably jumbled, into five 

 series : — 



Those with white spores, or Leiicosporce. 



Those with pink spores, or Rhodosporcs. 



Those with brown spores, or Ochrosporce. 



Those with purple spores, or Porphyrosporcr, and 



Those with black spores, or Mela7iospora. 



What is very remarkable about this curious division is that 

 the species in each group run parallel, or nearly so, to the 

 homologous species in the other groups, and that, generally 

 speaking, there is a gradual ascent in the evolution of the 

 type from the lowest, least well-organized forms, which are in 

 the black-spored series, to the highest best organized ones in 

 the white-spored division. Fries places the majority of 

 mushroom-like plants in the one great genus Agaricus, which 

 he then divides, as above stated, into series, and each series is 

 then further split up by certain characters into a number of 

 sub-genera, the names of which are placed between brackets 

 after the generic name Agaricus and before the name of the 



