manda 



■'^ 



HE frequency of this terrible foe in all 

 our woods, and the ever- recurring fa- 

 talities which are continually traced to 

 its seductive treachery (some twenty -five 

 deaths having been recorded in the public 

 journals during the summer of 1893 alone), render 

 it important that its teeth should be drawn, and its 

 portrait placarded and popularly familiarized as an 

 archenemy of mankind. 



As we have seen, from every superficial standpoint, 

 this species is self-commendatory. It is, without 

 doubt, in comeliness, symmetry, and 

 A whited Structure, the ideal of all our mush- 

 sepulchre rooms, as it is, indeed, the botanical 

 type of the tribe Agaricus, as well as 

 its most notorious genus. Since the time of that 

 carousing young lunatic Nero, who, doubtless, was 

 wont to make merry with its " convenient poison," 

 upon one occasion, it is recorded by Pliny, to the 

 presumably amusing extinction of the entire guests 

 of a banquet, together with the prefect of the guard 

 and a small host of tribunes and centurions, the 

 Amanita has claimed an army of victims. 



While giving no superficial token of its dangerous 



