38 



After the plants have been brought home, and you have col- 

 lected too many species to determine them all before they will 

 have wilted, and so lost some of their important diagnostic char- 

 acters, make copious notes upon a slip of paper, and let this slip 

 accompany the plants while they are drying. It is unnecessary 

 to say that it is much more satisfactory to analyze your plants 

 while they are fresh; but if this for any reason cannot be done, 

 the copious notes are essential. Besides the notes, a very help- 

 ful as well as beautiful object is a "sporeprint" of the mushroom. 

 To make this, have ready thick paper or cardboard on which a 

 very light coating of mucilage has been placed and allowed to dry. 

 Cut off -the "cap" of the mushroom and turn it with the gills or 

 pores downwards upon the gummed paper. Set over the speci- 

 men a bell-jar, or failing this a large dish, to completely cut off 

 any currents of air. After a certain period, varying from an hour 

 or two to a day or more, according to the specimen you are deal- 

 ing with, innumerable quantities of the spores will drop from the 

 gills or pore-surfaces upon the paper, the water in the fungus 

 sufficiently softening the mucilage, and will leave a perfect print 

 of the plant used, the gills or walls of the pores leaving tracings 

 upon the paper unmarked by any of the spores. 



This is most necessary; for in the large and important family of 

 Agaricaceae the colors of the spores are among the most useful 

 means of determining genera. Moreover, these various colors 

 white, yellow, rosy, purple, brown, and black are entirely inde- 

 pendent of the color of the gills or spore-bearing surfaces; while 

 spores which, viewed singly under the microscope, may seem of 

 one color, often prove when collected on a spore -print to be of quite 

 another color. While the different spore-prints are making, pro- 

 viding careful notes have been taken, the specimens to be pre- 

 served must be dried out quickly, so as to kill the larvae before 

 the fungi are riddled by their canals, as well as to preserve the 



5 ' The Ivory Hygrophorus, Hygrophorus eburneus. Slight- 

 ly reduced. Very common in pine woods. A delicate and delicious 

 mushroom. L/nown readily by its snowy whiteness and viscidity. 



