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present. I show a sketch (fig. 13,) which will enable you to see the manner in 
which this monstrosity is brought about. It is not an infrequent thing to finda 
young pileus situated beneath the pileus of an older plant amongst the gills, 
attached by its upper surface (figs. 14, 15). This has been explained by supposing 
that a young individual had commenced to grow from the ground beneath the 
expanded pileus of its older neighbour, and pressing against its gills had adhered, 
and at length become detached from its own stem, decapitated in fact, and carried 
up by the more vigoious growth of its captor. This explanation will not apply in 
all cases, for if, as in Agaricus campestris, a thick and somewhat substantial veil 
be present, one cannot understand how a neighbouring individual can penetrate 
the veil. M. De Seynes gives a very satisfactory account of how it may happen 
in a veiled species. He suggests that a supplemental receptacle is produced with- 
in the veil by prolification, as we shall presently see may easily be, and that its 
pileus is annexed by the parent plant; and he figures a case which came under 
his own observation, where the remnant of the ring still remained below the point 
at which the supplemental receptacle issued from the parent stipes (fig. 14).” 
**One more monstrosity from this cause deserves to be reproduced here, differ- 
ing from those already noticed in being an adhesion between the parts of the same 
receptacle. An Agaricus pulverulentus, P. (fig. 16), is represented with its pileus 
extending down the whole length of the stem, attached by its inner margin, from 
which the gills proceed in a horizontal direction to the outer margin. A portion 
of the pileus must have become firmly united in infancy, and become lengthened 
out as the stem elongated, after the fashion of a bat’s wing.” 
‘““We now come to consider monstrosities arising from prolification. These 
may be divided into inferior, superior, and included, i.e., those situated below, 
those above, and those within the substance of the pileus. It will be obvious that 
in relation to so simple an organism as is presented to us by one of the higher 
Hymenomycetes the word prolification must necessarily have a much more limited 
application than when employed of the vascular cryptogams and the phanerogams. 
A perfectly developed Agaric Hydnum or Polyporus is regarded as an organism 
the main function of which is the production of spores, which are the reproductive 
bodies, on a hymenial surface, and hence the entire plant is called a sporophore, 
or by some a receptacle. Prolification therefore means here the production, by a 
parent receptacle, of one or more daughter receptacles; or that part of a recept- 
acle that bears the spores, as, for example, a supplementary hymenium.” 
“One of the most familiar examples of what I prefer to call inferior prolifi- 
cation is that of Agaricus racemosus, Pers., familiar, not because of its being fre- 
quently met with, for it is one of the rarest of the genus, but because it was 
described and figured by Persoon so long ago as 1797, and has been reproduced 
by subsequent authors (fig. 17). It is a small and slender species, bearing through 
the whole length of its stem numerous supplementary receptacles, very much smaller 
than the parent plant, the pilei not being larger than a pin’s head. An analogous 
instance is that of Agaricus Aueri, Nees d’ Essenbeck (fig. 18), if it be not really 
another form of the same species; and aspecimen of Agaricus nanus, Bull, was 
observed and figured by M. De Seynes, in which a number of young receptacles are 
