plant to one who collects it for the first time. Being frequent in Eu- 

 rope it figures in almost every popular work on fungi and has been il- 

 lustrated many times. They call it the "beefsteak" fungus, and write a 

 lot of stuff comparing it to "juicy beef-steaks" and finding large speci- 

 mens that would furnish "four or five men a good dinner." A sec- 

 tion of it does look something like a piece of meat, but the resem- 

 blance stops there, and it can be no more compared to a beef-steak, 

 either for flavor or quality, than can a piece of sole-leather. The 

 young plant is covered on the upper surface with papillae, somewhat 

 like those on the tongue, and the French call the plant "langue-de- 

 boeuf " or tongue of a beef. The under surface has small, whitish 



Fig. 220 



Fig 221 



Fig. 220. The tubes of Fistulina hepatica enlarged x6.^ 

 Fig. 221. The mouths of pores enlarged x6. 



granules arrayed around the mouths of the pores as shown in Fig. 

 221, which is an enlargement six diameters of the pore surface. Our 

 figure (219) will give a good idea of the fresh plant if you will bear 

 in mind that the plant is red. Also the section was made from a 

 young specimen, for the pores are 6 to 8 mm. long when grown. It 

 seems to me from my dried specimens that the flesh of the American 

 plant is thinner than in the usual European form which we figure. 

 The plant has been known as Fistulina hepatica for a hundred years, 

 but having had other names in pre-historic times, it will no doubt ac- 

 quire new ones when the name changers get to work on it. 



