PREFACE. 



IT is sometimes necessary for a writer to give some 

 reasons for inflicting a new work upon the public, while 

 treatises on the same subject are already in print ; but 

 from this necessity I am in the present instance absolved 

 by the fact that no popular work on this branch of Botany 

 exists, or, to my knowledge, has hitherto been attempted. 

 With all its failings, therefore, this effort has the merit 

 of novelty to commend it, and I trust it will hereafter 

 be found of utility also. The difficulties to be en- 

 countered in describing, with as little technicality as 

 possible, the different species of esculent fungi so that 

 persons unacquainted therewith may discriminate them 

 have been much diminished by the liberality with 

 which the publisher has illustrated this work. Whilst 

 endeavouring to render the subject acceptable to the 

 general reader, I have at the same time kept the botani- 

 cal student in view ; and if, in the laudable attempt to 

 make this a "Plain and Easy Account of British Fungi" 

 for both classes of readers, I should have failed in 

 making it of service to either, it will at least serve to 

 familiarize the one with the fact that hundredweights 



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