129 
ON SOME OF THE LARGER AND RARER FUNGI 
OBSERVED DURING 1865. 
By W. G. Smita, Esq. 
(Pirate XLVI.) 
As a rule, the larger fungi are so fugitive in their nature, so capri- 
cious in their appearance, and so changeable as to their localities, that 
it is always difficult to assign either time or place for their appearance. 
Certain species, for instance, that are considered peculiar to a special 
habitat may occasionally be found in abundance in quite a different 
locality, and certain situations such as fir plantations, may often be 
searched for in vain from year’s end to year’s end without one species 
peculiar to fir districts being seen. Again, other species, such as 
Agaricus (Pleurotus) ostreatus, usually found growing in the autumn 
or early winter, will appear in the greatest abundance in spring, and it 
certainly has been our experience more than once, whilst searching for 
fungi peculiar to the south, to find in plenty a batch supposed never 
to be seen out of the north, and what is not dissimilar, to find a 
northern species luxuriating in a hot greenhouse, whilst the same plaut 
is dwarfed and abortive in the exposed air outside. The mycologist 
an never make sure of finding any particular species, for where a cer- 
tain group has been found plentifully during one year a single speci- 
men may be looked for in vain for many years afterwards; it has 
-probabi been the experience of every one who has studied the subject, 
to have found once a single specimen of a rare, or perhaps common 
Species, and never to have found it again, and after devoting several 
years nearly exclusively to this subject, it has certainly been our lot 
never to have seen one or two common species that are said to be 
“extremely common " and “ most abundant ;” some of these common 
forms appear rarely or never near London, whilst some of the rarer 
may be found before the smoke of London has been left behind. With 
some species it is difficult to say which are rare and which common, 
for the plant that is rare here may be common there, and the rarity of 
one season may he the “drug” of the next. 
That the above statements, however, ate not entirely without excep- 
tions, is proved by the occurrence of Boletus castaneus for many years 
VOL. iv. [May 1, 1866.] = K 
