OF BRITISH FUNGI. S3 



it is nevertheless welcome at such an early period of 

 the year when the more desirable kinds are not to be 

 obtained. 



Perhaps our word mushroom was derived from the 

 French moucheron or mousseron, by which this species 

 seems to have been designated on account of its growing 

 amongst moss. In France and Italy it is so highly 

 esteemed that, when dried, it will realize from twelve to 

 fifteen shillings per pound. Its capability of under- 

 going successfully the drying process, gives this species 

 the advantage over the common mushroom, which 

 some have declared it already possessed on account of 

 its flavour. An amateur writes of it thus : " It is 

 very good broiled ; but the best way of cooking it is to 

 bake it with a little butter, pepper, and salt, in an oven, 

 on a plate under a basin. A great quantity of gravy 

 comes out of it, mingled, in the case of a good specimen, 

 with osmazome, which tastes very much like the similar 

 brown exudation on the surface of a roast leg of mutton." 



Our plate (PI. 9) has inadvertently been named 

 AgaricMs prunulus, which, although one of the nume- 

 rous synonyms of this species, is also given to another 

 esculent fungus hereafter described, and which has a 

 greyish pileus and coloured spores. 



Amongst the species occasionally sold in Covent 

 Garden is a common one known there by the name of 

 Blewits, but to botanists as A.personatus (PI. 4, upper 

 figure). When mature it has a soft, convex, smooth, 

 moist pileus, with a solid, somewhat bulbous stem, tinted 

 with lilac. The gills are of a dirty white, and rounded 



D 



