EUCALYPTUS TREES. 121 
largest of them (Agaricus), contains alone about a 
thousand species, well distinguished from each other, 
a good many even occurring in this country. For the 
practical purposes of common life it becomes an object 
to distinguish the many wholesome from the multi- 
tude of deleterious kinds, or the circumstances under 
which the harmless sorts may become hurtful. In 
France the cultivation of mushrooms in under-ground 
caverns has become a branch of industry not altogeth- 
er unimportaut. How, in other instances, is many a 
culinary vegetable to be distinguished from the poi- 
son herb without the microscope of the phytographer 
being applied to dissections, or without the language 
of science recording the characters ? How many a 
life, lost through a child’s playfulness, or through the 
unacquaintance of the adult, even with the most ordi- 
nary objects of knowledge among plants, might have 
been saved, even in these times of higher education, 
if phytologic knowledge was more universal! The 
species of fungi which can be converted into pleasant, 
nutritious food are far more numerous than popularly 
supposed, but for extending industries in this direc- 
tion botanic science must assume the guardianship. 
In a technologie hall like this I should like to see 
instructive portraits also of all the edible and noxious 
plants likely to come within the colonist’s reach. 
Among about one thousand kinds of Fig-trees which 
(so Mons, Alphonse de Candolle tells me), through 
Mons. Bureau’s present writings for the Prodromus, 
are ascertained to exist, only one yields the fig of our 
table, only one forms the famed sycamore fig, planted 
along so many roads of the Orient; only one consti- 
tutes our own Ficus macrophylla, destined, in its 
*7 
