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There are a large number of Fungi round Cheltenham which 

 resemble the Mushroom, though they may differ in having no 

 collar, or in their colour, or in the appearance of the cap, and so 

 on, but the possession of gills on which the spores grow is charac- 

 teristic of a very large number indeed. Another and quite a 

 different class of Fungi look at a distance just like a Mushroom, 

 but on being turned upside down are found to have no gills, but in 

 their place a honeycomb-looking mass of tissue in which the spores 

 grow. Such a Fungus is Boletus laricinus, which grows in profusion 

 on the larch woods on the hills above The Crippets. Another 

 example of such a Fungus with pores, but no gills in which the 

 spores grow, is quite unlike a Mushroom, it grows out from the 

 trunks of trees like a bracket, and is sometimes yellow, sometimes 

 brown or black, and often a foot in breadth. 



Still another class of Fungi is formed by the Puff Balls. The 

 interior of these contains a material on which the spores grow, 

 which dries up into a dusty mass. The covering skin often ruptures 

 at the top and the spores are expelled through the opening and 

 blown away. 



Examples of these and of other classes of Fungi have been very 

 common near Cheltenham during the autumn of this year, and a 

 study of this somewhat neglected class of plant cannot fail to be 

 interesting to any keen botanist. 



