172 NATURE STUDY REVIEW l8:o— May, 191:i 



thing which the child — and his parent, too — considers worth 

 while, and in doing those things successfully. The lesson which 

 requires the child to make a failure of himself in order to be 

 successful in his lesson generally ends with the failure of the 

 child to see the point, and a feeling on the part of the parents 

 that there was no point. 



State College of Agriculture, Ames, lozva. 



Mushrooms 



C. H. Kauffman. 



Soon the warm rains of May and June will clothe our 

 northern lawns and meadows with greenest turf. Then, some 

 spring morning, as we glance out of our windows we will find 

 dainty umbrellas raising their tiny tops above the green grass. 

 These are among the first mushrooms of the season. Our neigh- 

 bors may call them toadstools, but we do not mind, since we 

 know that they are harmless for the most part, and that the 

 really deadly ones grow about or in the woods beyond.'^ Further- 

 more, if we know them each by name, we run out to find one 

 old acquaintance after another, hidden away among the blades 

 of grass, and we carefully bring them into the house and lay 

 them on the table so we can admire their pretty shapes and 

 delicate structure. 



Each of these mushrooms has three main parts : the stem 

 (stipe), the cap (pileus), and, on the underside of the cap, 

 radiating blades, like knife-blades, are attached and set closely 

 together, which are called the gills (lamellae). If we are lucky 

 in finding several kinds on our lawn, (Fig. 1) and examine the gills 

 closely we will find them to be of different colors, especially if 

 the caps are fully expanded. In some the gills are white, and 

 remain so. In others the gills become straw-yellow or brown- 

 ish, perhaps smoky-purplish or black. Usually the gills are white 

 in all of them as long as the mushrooms are still fairly young 

 and unexpanded. but soon they begin to show the diflferences 

 in color. Now it will be very interesting as well as entertain- 

 ing if we cut oflf the stems just below the caps and lay the 

 caps, gills down, on white sheets of paper. We cover these 

 over with a tumbler or tea-cup and leave them for six to twelve 

 hours. After removing the covers and raising the caps care- 

 fully, we will find a beautiful "print" on the paper, which is an 



