20 3IASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MEETING FOE LECTUEE AND DISCUSSION. 



Saturday, January 16, 1897. 

 A meeting for Lecture and Discussion was holden today at 

 eleven o'clock, Vice-President Charles H. B. Breck in the 



chair. The following lecture, which was fully illustrated with 

 stereopticon pictures, was delivered: 



The Structure and Classification of Mushrooms. 



By HoLLis Webster, Seci-etaiy of the Boston Mycological Club, Cambridge. 



Whatever may be the cause of the present popular interest in 

 mushrooms, it is evident not only to botanists, but to casual 

 readers of the monthly periodicals and of the daily press, that 

 within a few years this interest has grown largely, and that it is 

 spreading widely. Its manifestations are various and unmistak- 

 able ; but most of them have taken the form of demands for in- 

 formation and of the responses of those who have been willing to 

 give it. Three years ago, for instance, there appeared three 

 responses to this demand, one from an artist,' whose nature 

 studies have made him popularly known ; one from the State 

 Botanist of New York,* who has for thirty years given special 

 attention to the subject ; and one from the Professor of Crypto- 

 gamic Botany at Harvard.^ 



Most of the numerous articles that have recently appeared 

 have been concerned with showing the difference between edible 

 and poisonous kinds of mushrooms (or toadstools, which are the 

 same thing), and have been addressed to the general public. 

 There are, however, many persons who wish to know something 

 about mushrooms as plants, and perhaps to engage in limited 

 studies concerning them. These people generally lack a knowl- 

 edge of the elementary facts concerning structure and classifica- 

 tion that would make easy an attack upon the literature of the 

 subject. To such would-be students of a small part of the field 

 of mycology this lecture is addressed in the hope that it may be 

 of some assistance. 



At the outset it will be well to come to an understanding as 

 to the term rmtshroom itself. In every-day language it usuall\- 



1 W. H. Gibson, in " Harper's Monthly Magazine" for August, 1894. 



- C. H. Peck, in the "Cultivator ami Country Gentleman," May oT-Sept. 'JO, 1894. 



^ W. G. Farlow, in " Garden and Forest," Jan. •i4-Feb. -JS, 1S04. 



