MIMICRY. 339 



Assamese from a Reiicllia. We do not pretend to 

 assert that these arc all instances of mimetic resem- 

 blance, or that these, and scores of similar coinci- 

 dences, would give any support to a theory of 

 natural selection and survival of the fittest. All 

 that wc arc justified in proposing is, that these 

 circumstances should be borne in remembrance in 

 connection with the strange coincidences of form to 

 which we have devoted the preceding pages. 



Amongst fungi there are also striking resemblances, 

 which have been detailed more fully in another 

 place.^ Special attention was first directed to this 

 subject by Mr. Worthington Smith, who gave several 

 rather striking examples, although the pairs are more 

 closely allied than those selected amongst the 

 flowering plants. Thus, one poisonous species, 

 Agariais (Jicbdouid) fastibilis, greatly resembling the 

 edible mushroom, Agariais {psalliotd) campestris, 

 came up in great numbers upon a mushroom bed, 

 and might have caused a disastrous result, had not 

 the fact been detected by an adept. Another instance 

 was also that of a mass of fungi which made their 

 appearance on a mushroom bed. At first sight these 

 closely resembled the variety of an edible species 

 which not unusually comes up in clusters on old beds; 

 it has white spores, with a lobed and undulated white 



^ " Mimicry in Fungi, in Grevillea," vol. ix., p. 151. 

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