72 A PLAIN AND EASY ACCOUNT 



And, again, yet others of a waxy, or almost gelatinous 

 texture, with wrinkles or folds more or less imperforated ; 

 all of which are botanically united into a group, or 

 natural order, in which the pores distinguish them from 

 the gill-hearing order, and to which the distinctive 

 appellation of Polyporei has been given. It requires 

 no great erudition to arrive at the conclusion that this 

 name has been given in allusion to the numerous pores 

 with which one or other of the surfaces of these fungi 

 are studded, derived from the Greek word polus, signi- 

 fying many. These pores are the extremities of more 

 or less connected tubes, upon the walls or inner linings 

 of which the hymenium, or fructifying surface, support- 

 ing the reproductive bodies, or spores, is borne. Like 

 the Agaricini, this order is again subdivided into 

 smaller groups, or genera, in each of which the indivi- 

 duals agreeing most intimately with each other are 

 associated. In the first genus, Boletus (bolos, Greek, 

 a ball), the tubes are separable from one another. In 

 Polyporus the pores are not easily, if at all, separable. 

 In Dcedalea the pileus is corky and hard, and the pores 

 are labyrinthiform, irregular, or torn. The remaining 

 genera are briefly characterized in the Tabular arrange- 

 ment of Orders and Genera with which this work 

 concludes. 



Upwards of thirty species of Boletus are British, and 

 one of the commonest of these (. edulis) in the 

 opinion of some is scarcely inferior to the best mush- 

 room in flavour. It has a smooth, brownish pileus, 

 with tubes at first yellowish but becoming greenish or 



