97 



(Original Sttrticlcj^, 



NEW AND IIAEE HYMENOMYCETOTJS FUNC^I. 



By Woethington G. Smith, F.L.S, 



(Tab. 161, 162.) 



The sub-genus Eccilia is one of the most interesting of all the sub- 

 genera of Agaricus. The species are few and rare, as are many of the 

 plants which correspond in structure but differ in the possession of 

 white, brown, or purple spores (instead of pink) and which \ arc 

 found under the analogous sub-genera Omphalia, Tuharia, or Deconica. 

 The two latter sub-genera have met with some little opposition in 

 this country as being founded on " insufficient grounds," but Fries, in 

 the new edition of his '' Epicrisis " (p. 273), has adopted Tuharia and 

 placed ten species under it, and variously altered Psilocyle and made 

 Deconica (p. 299) equivalent to one of its sections. There is no species 

 of Eccilia recorded in the " British Flora " (1836), or in Berkeley's 

 " Outlines " (1860), so that we may presume Mr. Berkeley himself ta 

 be only recently acquainted with this rare sub-genus in a living state. 

 During the last fifteen years three species have been recorded as 

 British, but till last year we had ourselves never seen a single speci- 

 men in a fresh state. "We are now, however, able to double the 

 number of British species, and make them six instead of three. Fries, 

 in his new "Epicrisis," describes ten species oi Eccilia, including 

 one plant some time since published by Messrs. Berkeley and Broome,, 

 and Agaricus atro-punctus, P., described below. 



1. Agaeicus {^Eccilia) flosctjlus, nov. sp. Pileus submembrana- 

 ceous, pruinoso-crystalline, deeply umbilicate, somewhat irregular, 

 black- brown, becoming white with age ; stem pruinose or innato- 

 fibrillose, cartilaginous with a fleshy pith, attenuated downwards ; 

 gills decurrent, somewhat waved, thick, pink ; spores nodulose. 



On the ground at the foot of and upon the stems of tree ferns 

 {Dichso7iia antarctica) at Messrs. Veitch's Nursery, Chelsea, June, 

 1870. Allied to the next but a very different plant, the dark-brown 

 tramaand external pruinoso-crystalline stratum are characteristic; see 

 section, fig. 8. [Tab. 161, fig. 4—9.] 



2. Agaricus {Eccilia) acus, nov. sp. Pileus submembranaceous, 

 deeply umbilicate, densely pruinose, white ; margin striate and in- 

 curved ; gills thick, distant, deeply decurrent, pink ; stem cartila- 

 ginous, smooth ; odour strong, fungoid ; spores nodulose. 



Amongst germinating coffee-seeds in cocoa-nut fibre ; Royal Gardens, 



Kew. This interesting and distinct plant was gathered by the Bcv. M. 



J. Berkeley, in August, 1873, and placed in our hands for illustration. 



It differs in its snow-white pruinose pileus, and in other characters 



K.s. VOL. 4. [April, 1875.] h 



