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intentional. The only safe rule is to confine oneself to known 
e forms until others are proven harmless. If one is a be- 
ginner, he is like an explorer in a new country with an abundance 
of attractive fruit near at hand, which may be good or may be 
rank poison; he cannot tell without trying it, unless some native, 
who has learned from his own and others’ experience, shares his 
knowledge with him. 
The writer on this subject undertakes a very responsible task, 
owing to the vast number of similar forms among the mushrooms 
which are distinguished with difficulty by those not accustomed 
to fine distinctions ; but it should be possible to describe a few 
striking kinds in such a way that no serious mistakes will be 
made. 
The common field mushroom (PI. 55, fig. 4) is known to almost’ 
everyone who pretends to collect mushrooms at all, and the 
Y pre 
ee of collectors limit pate entirely to this one kind. 
It grows in low grass on meadows or on rich, moist upland 
pastures, being common after rains from August to October. 
The upper side is white with brownish fibrils or scales, and the 
under side is a beautiful salmon-pink when young, changing 
gradually to almost black when old. The stem is colored like 
the top and has a loose white ring around it. There is little or 
no swelling at the base of the stem and no “cup,” as in the 
deadly amanita, which latter, moreover, is white underneath and 
grows usually in woods or groves 
e “ spawn,”’ or vegetative portion of the common mushroom, 
bodies, known as “‘ buttons,’”’ appear on the spawn and soon de- 
velop into “mushrooms,” which are in reality only the mature 
fruit bodies of a delicate and widely branching plant entirely con- 
cealed in the earth. The parts of the fruit body are known as 
the “stem” and the “cap.” On the under side of the cap are 
the “ gills,’ which bear countless tiny bodies known as “‘ spores,” 
which are distributed by the wind and produce new plants as 
seeds do in the case of flowering plants. The cottony “ring” 
on the stem is what remains of a thin white “ veil”? which cov- 
