CRYPTOG AMI A FUNGI. 1 85 



smooth, with an involute margin ; flesh white, thin ; gills repeat- 

 edly dichotomous, close, rather narrow, varying from gamboge to 

 saffron-yellow, or brown Sow. Fung. t. 98. (tab. nost. vii.) 



Hob. In saw dust, and on small pieces of rotten wood in 

 the wine-cellar of Mr J. li. Dunlop. 



A beautiful and very singular production. At first very cot- 

 tony, with a much inflected border, and of a circular form, 

 but when full-grown it assumes, pretty constantly, a spoon 

 or mussel shape, and is fixed only by one end to the object 

 on which it grows. I have seen it with a thick short stalk, 

 and occasionally one fungus may be observed to grow from 

 the gills of another. 



This will probably be found to be a very imperfect list of the 

 Agarics of N Durham and Berwickshire, for in the immediate vi- 

 cinity of Berwick there is no place very favourable for their pro- 

 duction, and they cannot be easily procured from a distance in a 

 state fit for examination. The genus, according to SPRENGEL, 

 contains 646 species, and this is much below the number described 

 by other authors ! another remarkable example of that variety 

 in which Nature delights. " If we were to make a system on the 

 subject, it should be, that she delights in variety, not in unifor- 

 mity ; in displaying the extent of her resources and means, not 

 their limits ; in difficulties overcome, in complexity, not in sim- 

 plicity. She amuses us with two or three hundred Ericce ; with 

 endless speci3s of a genus, differing so slightly, yet still differing, 

 that she compels us to wondsr how she has produced variations 

 so numerous, so slender, yet so marked. She even makes us 

 wonder why all this is. There are as many hundreds of mush- 

 rooms ; of a tribe, the simplicity of which would defeat our at- 

 tempts to vary them, were the problem given, and which yet do 

 not defeat our labours in distinguishing them. Nature is all va- 

 riety, invention wealth, profusion. She riots and wantons in her 

 own powers ; she daxxles us by her fertility, and astonishes us 

 by her resources. She scorns man and his philosophy, that would 

 bind her down, and measure her by his own narrow powers and 

 conception. This is Nature. These are the wonders of its Al- 

 mighty Author ." Dr MACCULLOCH, but the quotation somewhat 

 altered from the original. 



