SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE HYMENOMYCETES. 177 
Cortinarii and Russule. And one is not surprised at this when 
he remembers that Fries in his Hymenomycetes Europe: de- 
scribes 1200 spp.,of which some 800 have been found in Britain; 
and remembers also that in the case of many of them, the 
characteristic differences, though apparent enough to the 
trained eye, are not very easy to set down ina verbal descrip- 
tion. That the species are really distinct in the case of most of 
those that have been described, and that they are as constant 
as in flowering plants, becomes more and more evident as 
one pursues his investigations. But in a fungus there are 
comparatively few features to lay hold of in describing a 
species—as a rule, only the stem and gills and pileus; 
you have no leaf to describe, or bracts or sepals, or corolla 
or seedpod—all so helpful in phanerogamous botany. If 
the spores of all of them were of the same colour, the 
difficulty would be vastly greater, but happily the spores 
may be white, or black, or rosy, or brown, or purple, or 
ferruginous, and these differences in colour are constant, so 
that you can split up the Agarics into a corresponding 
number of series, each of which is divided into subgenera, 
dependent on differences in the veil, and in the attach- 
ment of the gills to the stem. When the differences of 
these subgenera have been mastered, it is not generally 
difficult to assign a particular Agaric to one or other of them, 
and then the determination of the particular species is a 
matter of patience and practice. Fortunately, Fries’ 
descriptions of species are exceedingly good, and for those 
who are not very familiar with Latin, they are reproduced 
by Dr Stevenson in his British Fungi, an excellent Flora 
which is accessible to all, I would therefore counsel those 
who are beginning the study of the gilled-fungi not to be 
discouraged by the initial difficulties, but to exercise a little 
perseverance, and, as they gain increased skill in identifica- 
tion, they will find the fascination of the pursuit take very 
firm hold of them. Most of us who have long given atten- 
tion to field botany are more or less familiar with almost 
every phanerogamous plant we come across, and interest in 
botanical excursions begins to fade, but here, in mycology, 
we have a wide field that will take a great deal of exhausting. 
I have never known anyone who has been patient and 
