371 
NEW AND RARE FUNGI NEAR HALIFAX. 
CHARLES CROSSLAND. 
Coprinus oblectus Fr. Agaricus oblectus Bolton. This extremely 
rare Coprinus was first discovered at Halifax, in the year 1790, 
by James Bolton, and is finely figured and carefully described 
under the name of Agaricus oblectus in his ‘ History of Funguses 
found growing about Halifax’ (Tab. 142), from which the 
following quaint yet very clear description is copied. 
* The root is swelled, and emits white downy fibres. 
*‘ Zhe stem is white, of a soft silky surface, and easily splits in 
shining white ommeiet 5 it is hollow, but with a soft silky down 
in the perforatio 
* The curtain is spices soft, downy, and separates from the rim 
of the pileus; when the stem has attained but a small part 
of its height, it is permanent, abiding near the bottom of the 
stem, till the decay of the plant 
‘ The gills are, while the plant is young, covered with a car- 
nation coloured powder, changing black in decay, rolling upwards, 
and dissolving in a black turbid jelly. 
* The pileus at first covered with a white downy eperidermis 
which soon disappears, and the surface becomes striated, and of 
a soft, downy, livid, carnation colour; which colour, both in the 
young and the old plants, consists of a soft powder, which at 
last changes black and dissolves. 
‘Grows on new dung-hills.’ (Bolton). 
No record of this fungus has been made in Britain since the 
time of Bolton, until a few weeks ago, when it was re-discovered 
in the town in which it was first found. It has evidently been 
considered by many mycologists in this country a doubtful 
British species, being excluded from Berkeley’s Outlines of 
Fungology (1860) ; Cooke’s Handbook of British Fungi (1871), 
and Stevenson’s Hymenomycetes Britannici (1886), However, it 
is interesting to note that Dr. Cooke includes it in the ‘Second and 
Revised Edition’ of his ‘ Handbook,’ the first portion of which 
appeared in 1883, and figures it (after Bolton) in his splendid 
set of illustrations, which ought to be in the possession of every 
working mycologist; it also finds a place in W. G. Smith’s 
Supplement to Berkeley’s Outlines (1891) p. 173, and in Massee’s 
‘British Fungus Flora,’ Vol. 1 (1892), p- 307 ; in the latter it is 
accompanied by Bolton’s description as above given. 
During a ramble with Mr. H. T. Soppitt, on Bradford, on 
October roth, after heavy and continuous rain on the previous 
892, 
Dec, x 
