178 REV. DAVID PAUL. 
persevering at the outset, and who has thus managed to 
follow the pursuit to a certain point, who has not gone on 
with increasing zest in the study year after year. I know 
that some of the happiest hours of my own life, hours freest 
of care and trouble, have been associated with the despised 
toadstools, which are generally kicked aside as being beneath 
notice, and the students of which are commonly looked down 
upon from the sublime heights of ignorance, with complacent 
compassion as harmless lunatics. 
I purposely gave as the title of my paper, “ Some 
Observations on the Hymenomycetes,” that I might have 
free scope to wander over the subject as I chose, and might 
not be tied down too tightly to systematic treatment, for I 
have little leisure time for the drawing up of a scientific 
treatise, and I will only now make some remarks on certain 
groups of fungi, or on some individual species that for any 
reason iexteas, particular notice. 
The first subgenus of Agaricus that finds a place in 
Fungus Floras is that of Amanita, a white-spored agaric 
with a universal veil which at first completely envelops 
the young plant, and which is distinct from the epidermis 
of the pileus. An Amanita is so distinct from other fungi 
that it can be known at a glance, and they are among the 
most beautiful of all our large fungi. The species of 
Amanite that are commonest and most easily recognisable 
are these four: phalloides, muscarius, rubescens and vaginatus. 
But there are seventeen species occurring in Britain, and I 
think the reason why one or two more are not familiar to 
us, is simply because they are overlooked. There is one 
very like phalloides, which is called mappa, and has much 
the same appearance and colour. Phalloides itself is not 
nearly so common as muscarius, or rubescens, or vaginatus, 
and mappa seems less frequent than phalloides. I have 
always been in doubt whether these two are entitled to 
rank as distinct species. The distinction is said to lie 
chiefly in the volva, and sometimes, I admit, it is well 
marked, the volva of mappa being circularly-ruptured close 
to the stem, so as to have little or nothing of a free lacerated 
edge, while that of phalloides is ruptured very irregularly 
with a lax, torn border. It is worth paying attention to 
