55 
accustomed to roam over field and pasture does not know the quaint, cylindrical 
“Tall John,” with a fleshy and patchy white wig, and a hollow stem witha 
white powdery fragile ring encircling it, known to mycologists as the ‘‘ Coprinus 
comatus,” and sometimes as the ‘‘agaric of civilization ;” but hardly less familiar 
to hundreds who cannot put a name to it, and who come across it and its gray- 
capped cousin C. Atramentarias, 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 gastro- 
nomic pleasures may learn to count amongst their benefactors the motley group 
of mycologists 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 stripes, supplies a capital 
razor strop, and the other species of the same group which are manufactured into 
and by the styptic known as Amadou or German Tinder. The medicinal substance 
known as ergot of rye is also, it need hardly be said, a true fungus. Generally, 
too, to quote the highest English authority on the subject, ‘ the office of fungi in 
the organised word is to check exuberant growth, to facilitate decomposition, to 
regulate the balance of the component parts of the atmosphere, to promote fer- 
tility, and to nourish myriads of the smaller members of the animal kingdom.” 
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 ex- 
haust our paper. 
Amidst the things of beauty—though certainly not of joy to the incautious 
taster—in fungus life may be cited the Boletus luridus, 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 yel- 
lowish spots, and underlaid 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 brighest orange, which no one will forget 
who saw the other day a specimen of it, measuring eight and a half inches 
