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the curious interest of a lesser and a larger camp in the precincts of a demesne 
which is said to have been the envy o: the Spanish in the days of Elizabeth; nor 
will I dilate, lest it should seem fulsome on the hospitable welcome we received 
from its accomplished and scholarly proprietor, so completely keeping in view the 
enlightenment of our minds and the refreshment of our bodies. I will pass now to 
a more local theme, and to what is now, I might say, our great characteristic 
speciality in the way of meetings—our Fungas Feast and Foray. This was 
formally solemnised on the 1st of October with the usual rites and ceremonies, but 
by the beginning of the week mycologists were gathering from far and near, and 
the preliminary forays, introducing our chief fungus finders by day to the grounds 
and groves of Downton and the wooded slopes of Dinmore Hill, whilst at nightfall 
private dinner-tables were rehearsing the crowning hazard of Thursday’s fungus 
feast by cautious experiments on the edibility of toadstools. I cannot say the 
weather was entirely propitious : indeed, the rain of the early morniug of the first 
of October damped the ardour of many on whom we counted to accompany us to 
the delightful precincts and park of Stoke Edith, which by Lady Emily Foley’s 
kind permission we were allowed to hunt over for our favourite game. It damped 
the ground also to such sloppiness as to be the cause of misadventures to ancles and 
knees no longer in their first youth. But you will not bid me, I am sure, “‘ Infandum 
renovare dolorem.” -Is not the history of the collapse of the President and his 
mushroom, engraven and written in the truthful pages of the Graphic? A very 
thorough account of the week’s proceedings, the visit to Garnstone which finished 
it included, will be found in the transactions of the year, and thanks to our 
visitors—amongst whom we lacked through temporary indisposition, the genial 
authority of Mr. Berkeley—the papers read after our feast, both in the dinner-room 
and at Mr. Cam’s pleasant and now looked-for soiree, atone for a certain dearth of 
such kind of pabulum at the earlier meetings of the year. I shall therefore forbear 
to touch on the interesting experiences of the fungus week, whether a-field or 
a-feasting ; except so far as to note that the high festival of our great day was 
graced by the presence of three ladies, all more or less experimental mycologists, 
all highly successful in the discovery, delineation, or dressing, by deputy, for the 
hospitable dinners of the Poole, of those edible fungi for which our county is 
famous. All three successes are in my humble opinion to be envied, and the last 
not least so; and I think I can plead an authority you will all accept for this 
averment. 
At the close of a pleasant and instructive review of ‘‘ Fungi: their nature, 
influence, and uses,” in the Gardener’s Chronicle of March 27, Mr. Worthington 
Smith not indistinctly sets the vital phenomena of fungi, and (note this) a know- 
ledge of those species which decidedly affect our health or food, above the discovery 
and determination of the plants as mere species, and as a more remunerating though 
perhaps less difficult study. The mention of Worthington Smith brings me to one 
of the two events of our Woolhope year, which make me rejoice in the second year 
of office. When I recollect how generous, suggestive, helpful, and enthusiastic 
has been Mr. Smith’s assistance to us as a Club and as individuals—wheneyer we 
want a fungus named, or drawn, or engraved, or a Herefordshire forest tree 
