MUSHROOM SPORE-PRINTS 279 



genial soil. These spores are thus analogous to the 

 seeds of ordinary plants. The number of these vital 

 atoms or spores in a single Puff-ball is almost past 

 computation. Fries, however, an eminent fungologist, 

 went to some pains to estimate this 

 Number number, and, referring to a certain puff- 

 of spores ball, says : " The spores are infinite. In 

 a single individual of Reticularia max- 

 ima I have reckoned ten millions so subtle as to 

 resemble thin smoke as light as if raised by evapo- 

 ration, and dispersed in so many ways — by the sun's 

 attraction, by insects, by adhesion and elasticity — that 

 it is difficult to conceive the spots from which they 

 could be excluded." 



We have seen the myriad-fold dispersion of its po- 

 tential atoms in the cloud of spore-smoke, but who 

 ever thinks of a spore -cloud from a 

 ^"Tom*'"*' mushroom or a toadstool? Yet the 

 mushrooms method of the Puff-ball is followed by 

 all the other fungi, with only less con- 

 spicuousness. The Puff-ball gives a visible salute, 

 but any one of the common mushrooms or toadstools 

 will afford us a much prettier and more surprising 

 account of itself if we but give it the opportunity. 

 This big yellow toadstool out under the poplar-tree 

 — its golden cap studded with brownish scurfy warts, 

 its under surface beset with closely plaited laminae or 

 gills — who could ever associate the cloud of dry 

 smoke with this moist, creamy -white surface.'' We 

 may sit here all day and watch it closely, but we shall 

 see no sign of anything resembling smoke or dust, 

 albeit a filmy emanation is continually eluding us, 



