JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 103 



Mr. C. G. Lloyd, of Cincinnati, is doing very valuable work. His 

 pamphlet on the Volvae is, I think, the very best work on the 

 subject. He is publishing a series of photographs of mushrooms 

 that is a valuable aid to all students of the subject. Mr. Knox, of 

 Cleveland, is publishing a series of lithographs, colored by hand, 

 in water colors, that is in many respects the best series of drawings 

 of fungi that I have seen. 



The Latin word Fungus has been adopted to apply to the whole 

 of that class of cryptogams to which mushrooms belong. Fungus has 

 by some dreary-minded scoffers been derived from Funus (a funeral), 

 but we indignantly reject this derivation as only proceeding from a 

 diseased imagination. 



Mushroom is probably derived from the French Mousseron, the 

 name used to designate the Agaricus Prunulus, a particularly delic- 

 ious specie?. Mousseron from Mousse Moss, so named because it 

 seldom grows in moss. 



Much study has been applied to the etymology of Toadstool. 

 One favorite derivation is from the German Tod (death) and Stuhl 

 (chair) — a most suitable and picturesque origin for the word, all the 

 more attractive that it is probably not the true etymology. How 

 narrow and unscientific must be the mind of one who would reject 

 such an etymology simply because it was not the real history of a 

 word ! Then there is " toad " and " stool." A chair for toads ! 

 Who ever saw a toad sitting on a toadstool now-a-days ? Yet if 

 this derivation be the correct one, there must at one time have been 

 a species of toad that used such a chair. Now, if we accept this 

 derivation, we prove the survival of the hardy species of toads that 

 needed no chairs, and so add one more unassailable link to the 

 chain of evidence of the survival of the fittest. 



And there is yet another consideration. Everyone has seen the 

 fairy rings of mushrooms — the Marasmius Oreades (they are very 

 numerous on the golf grounds). Now, it is understood that the fairies 

 dance within these rings while the fairy spectators sit perched upon 

 the surrounding mushrooms. Among these mushrooms, but gener- 

 ally a litde outside, like chairs drawn into the background, are 

 poisonous toadstools ; on these the toads must sit, a little withdrawn 

 from the society circle, on the mushrooms of the fairy ring. The 

 beauty of this derivation is that it establishes the ej^istence of fairies, 

 g, point that t always wanted settled. 



