172 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Boleti are fit and proper for food, and so with the others. The 

 Agariei, or mushrooms with gills, are a large family, and we cannot 

 part with them all on account of the Amanita, but must learn to 

 get rid of it from our collections, leaving us free to gather the 

 great variety of gilled mushrooms which are edible. 



Tliis brings us to some consideration of the manner of growth 

 of mushrooms in general and of the Amanita in particular. 

 Mushrooms may be considered as the fruit of the plant itself, the 

 plant being a thread-like substance out of sight below^ the surface ; 

 the fruit is nature's method of maturing and distributing the seed 

 or germ of new life, spores. 



Mr. W. Hamilton Gibson, in his recently published work " Our 

 Edible Mushrooms and Toadstools," has made all wlio follow him 

 on this subject his debtors, and we shall have occasion to draw 

 often from his beautiful and life-like plates, as weil as from 

 Captain Palmer's " Mushrooms of America ; " from the Government 

 reports of the Division of Microscopy, Department of Agriculture, 

 and the English works of Mrs. T. J. Hussey and Rev. M. C. 

 Cooke. 



In a plate of Mr. Gibson's book we see the thread-like plant, 

 the mycelium of the mushroom. At times, after rains or in the 

 proper conditions of heat and moisture, the growth is quickened 

 and these little knobs begin to grow and soon push above the 

 surface with the appearance of a small egg. The successive 

 stages of growth are well indicated in another of Mr. Gibson's 

 drawings ; in the fii'st stage, the mushroom is enclosed in an 

 envelope which is soon ruptured, but the envelope or volva 

 leaves behind it, in the Amanitas, several indications of its 

 presence, and these may well be called Nature's danger signals. 

 As the mushroom grows a portion of the ruptured envelope 

 adheres to the cap, another portion connects the cap at its edge 

 with the stem, and another part remains at the base, a cup or sac 

 from whicli the stem rises. As the cap expands these scales or 

 warts remain upon the cap, the veil falls away from the cap and 

 surrounds the stem, the sac remains at the base, and we have the 

 complete Amanita vernus, a deadly poison, which Mr. Gibson has 

 appropriately marked with the death's head and labelled " poison." 

 This mushroom is one of the most attractive in appearance, pure 

 white without distinct odor; it is very common, generally accom- 

 panying edible species, and would be likel}' to be the first selected 



