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JOUBNAL OF HOETICULTDRE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ October 22, 1874. 



patchy white wig, and a hollow stem with a white powdery 

 fragile ring encircling it, known to mycologists as the " Co- 

 prinus comatus," and sometimes as the " Agaric of civilisa- 

 tion ;" bnt hardly less familiar to hundreds who cannot put a 

 name to it, and who come across it and its grey-capped cousin 

 C. Alramentariue, in the open garden or at the base of stumps 

 or palings? This Fungus has long been mixed with others in 

 the composition of ketchup, and Atramentarius is said to make 

 very good ink. It has been reserved for the Woolhope Club 

 to demonstrate its value as the principal ingredient in a 

 piquant and tasty soup, to outward appearance resembling 

 Green Pea soup, or, perhaps, more closely Parsley and butter 

 in a tureen. Whatever its semblance, it is too good an addition 

 to our list of soups to be lightly forgotten ; and, perhaps, the 

 day will yet come when those philosophers whose mental grasp 

 can embrace nothing higher than the addition of another and 

 another novelty to their gastronomic pleasures, may learn to 

 count amongst their benefactors the motley group of mycolo- 

 gists whom an inscribed festoon in one of the streets at the 

 recent opening of the Free Library at Hereford, designates 

 irreverently and illiterately as the " Fungi Fogies." After all, 

 however, even putting the question of edibility aside, it is not 

 difficult to find good reasons for prosecuting the study of 

 mycology. Medicinally and industrially many Fungi have 

 their special purpose, as for instance the scaly Polyporus, 

 which, dried and cut into strips, supplies a capital razor strop, 

 and the other species of the same group which are manufac- 

 tured into the styptic known as Amadou or German Tinder. 

 The medicinal substance known as ergot of rye has also, it 

 need hardly be said, a fungoid origin. Generally, too, to quote 

 the highest English authority on the subject, " the office of 

 Fungi in the organised world is to check exuberant growth, to 

 facilitate decomposition, to regulate the balance of the com- 

 ponent parts of the atmosphere, to promote fertility, and to 

 nourish myriads of the smaller members of the animal king- 

 dom." Regarded in this practical light, the numerous family 

 of Funguses asserts a strong title to intelligent study, and 

 cannot lightly be overlooked by any Field Club that deserves 

 its name. An attempt to catalogue the Fungi which line the 

 woodland path, or have their habitation at the foot or amid 

 the branches of the Oak, Ash, Elm, the Larch, and Fir, the 

 Birch and the Poplar, would very soon more than exhaust our 

 paper. Amidst the things of beauty — though certainly not of 

 joy to the incautious taster — in Fungus life may be cited the 

 Boletus Inridus, umber-coloured above, and bright red or even 

 vermilion below, and suspiciously changing, when broken or 

 bruised, to a blue complexion. Or, again, the Fly Agaric 

 {Agaricus [Amanita] muscarius), with its bright scarlet cap, 

 worked, so to speak, with yellow or yellowish spots, and under- 

 laid with a bright yellow flesh, which is succeeded, lower still, 

 by a pervading white. Its stem is bulbous and marked by a 

 distinctive ring. The Peziza aurantia is another perfectly 

 lovely tenant of the woods and heaths, a delicate crisping 

 " lamina " of the brightest orange, which no one will forget 

 who saw the other day a specimen of it measuring 8^ inches 

 across, sent from Shobden Court by Lord Bateman. Amongst 

 the liussulas, found freely this year as usual in Herefordshire, 

 there is as great a variety of hue as of wholesomeness, from 

 the pale pink and faint rose to the brilliant scarlet of R. emetiea. 

 Cortinarius cinnabarinus is a clustering group, of a bright 

 orange or nearly vermilion, with a metallic lustre. The Cin- 

 namon Mushroom (Cortinarius Cinnamoneus) appeals to the 

 sense of smell as well as of seeing, and there are several Fungi 

 of which the recent expedition furnished specimens which 

 make the former appeal without any pretence to the latter. 

 Before glancing at these we must just name the violet-capped 

 Agaricus euchrous, found at Dinmore Woods on the 30th of 

 September; the Coprinus picaceus, or Mar/pie Coprinus, a 

 rare roadside Fungus met with near Downton, the membraned 

 cap of which is variegated with broad white scales, whilst its 

 gills are free and of an ashen black ; the mouse-grey Agaricus 

 gloiocephalus, of which a large group was exhibited by Dr. 

 Chapman from oS the pastures of Burnhill ; and the rare, 

 pale-yellow, crisped Sparassis, which has been more than once 

 imported into these shows from the Fir groves of Chetwynd, 

 by Mr. Houghton. We must also say a word on the odorous 

 Fungi, whether sweet-savoured or the contrary. Of the first 

 sort there were found at Stoke Edith, Lactarina glyciosmus, 

 and Agaricus fragrans and odorus; of the second, at Dinmore, 

 the Agaricus cucumis, in an abundance commensurate with its 

 strong odour, suggestive of rancid oil or stinking fish. Ag. 

 Bsponacens, too, was offered to our scrutiny, bnt pronounced, 



after deliberation, to savour more of fish oil than of soap; 

 and the interest displayed in Dr. Chapman's fine group of 

 Gloiocephalus was to a certain extent qualified by its exceed- 

 ingly repulsive smell. Occasionally in the course of the forays 

 one lighted on a family of Fungi, such as Agaricus mucidus, 

 the associations of which are more with the touch than the 

 sight or smell. Unpleasantly slimy, it arrested the notice of 

 the Woolhopians by its profusion at a certain point in Stoke 

 Edith woods, both on the ground itself, and on the tall fine- 

 grown Beeches which are its home. 



The mention of these sylvan beauties suggests another 

 element of interest in Fungus-hunting — namely, the intro- 

 duction it gives one to the finest timber in our land. As we 

 have said, the Fungi love the greenwoed. And if, in the 

 recent excursions around Hereford, the curious in such matters 

 were too late by a couple of centuries to see at Stoke Edith 

 the Elizabethan house of many gables, long since superseded 

 by the present stately quadrangular mansion, or at Garnetone 

 the original and characteristic mansion as it appeared in 1675, 

 and was represented in Dingley's sketch, known to readers of 

 the Camden Society's publications, in the place of which is a 

 castellated mansion built by Nash, yet in each case they might 

 have made acquaintance with giant Oaks and stately Elms 

 which perchance have been the silent witnesses of changes yet 

 earlier than these ; Oaks and Elms still betraying no traces of 

 decrepitude, and still, as of old, giving grace, dignity, and 

 pioturesqueness to the landscape. It is not every day that 

 one sees anything so perfect in its way as the great hall 

 at Stoie Edith, the walls and ceilings of which were painted 

 by Sir .Tames 'Thornhill, or as the geometric flower garden 

 designed by Nesfield ; and yet an explorer might be still better 

 employed in threading the paths of the richly timbered deer 

 park, and making his way to the broad and lofty ridge of 

 Seager Hill, whence he may look out upon the country towards 

 Gloucester, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Bromyard, and Salop, 

 to say nothing of the hill and valley of Woolhope nestling close 

 beneath his standpoint. And so with the demesne of Garnstone ; 

 the predominant charm is in the deer park and the heights 

 that bound it, the latter commanding exquisite views of North 

 and East Herefordshire, as well as of Shropshire and the 

 mountain barriers of Radnorshire, the former affording a study 

 of single trees and clumps and groups of extreme beauty, such 

 as is not often to be met with. Here a couple of Scotch Firs, 

 there a noble Spruce or Silver Fir, arrest the eye by their 

 perfectness of symmetry, or their rich contrast of form and 

 colouring with their surroundings. Groups of Spanish Chest- 

 nuts, clumps of Elms, or avenue-like arrangements of the 

 same, promising Wellingtonias, and the like, show how much 

 good taste may achieve without the aid of a professional land- 

 scape gardener, where the proprietor finds himself possessed of 

 an over-abundance of fine timber, and approaches the task of 

 thinning as a labour of love. Within the lawn and sunk fence 

 at Garnstone, the mycologists were as much struck with the 

 thriving Conifers of comparatively recent introduction as with 

 the special denizens of the turf in quest of which they had 

 come. There were perfect samples — for their age — of the 

 Piceas nobilis, cephalonica, and Pinsapo, as well as of the 

 Californian P. bracteata, the leafy-bracted Silver Fir, a very 

 promising young tree, which, perhaps on account of a weU- 

 chosen aspect, shows here no tendency to premature starting 

 into growth, and thus is less affected by late spring frosts. 

 The complaint of this species generally is the tenderness of its 

 younger growths. — {The Saturday Revieu:) 



THE LATE MB. JAMES BETTERIDGE. 



Another old florist has passed away from among us, one of 

 those who, devoting their time to one speciality and doing it 

 with zeal, have thereby conferred a boon on horticulture. To 

 the world at large Mr. .Tames Betteridge was known by the 

 success which had attended his culture of the quilled, or as it 

 is now somewhat arbitrarily called, the German Aster; and the 

 stands which he used to exhibit at the Crystal Palace and 

 elsewhere were of such surpassing excellence, that his strain was 

 sought for by everyone desirous of growing that particular sort. 

 Mr. Betteridge was a farmer, farming his own land, and gar- 

 dening was to him a real relaxation and pleasure. He was an 

 ardent lover of the Tulip, and wherever the National Tnlip 

 Show was held he was pretty sure to be found. I never had 

 the pleasure of speaking to him but once, at one of the autumn 

 exhibitions of our Metropolitan Floral Society, but those who 

 knew him speak of him as a kindly genial man ; bnt all will 



