EUCALYPTUS TREES. 157 



largest of them (Agaricus), contains alone about a 

 thousand species, well distinguished from each other, 

 a good many even occurring in this country. For the 

 practical purposes of common life it becomes an object 

 to distinguish the many wholesome from the multi- 

 tude of deleterious kinds, or the circumstances under 

 which the harmless sorts may become hurtful. In 

 France the cultivation of mushrooms in under-ground 

 caverns has become a branch of industry not altogeth- 

 er unimportant. How, in other instances, is many a 

 culinary vegetable to be distinguished from the poi- 

 son herb without the microscope of the phytographer 

 being applied to dissections, or without the language 

 of science recording the characters ? How many, a 

 life, lost through a child's playfulness, or through the 

 unacquaintance of the adult, even with the most ordi- 

 nary objects of knowledge among plants, might have 

 been saved, even in these times of higher education, 

 if phytologic knowledge was more universal ! The 

 species of fungi which can be converted into pleasant, 

 nutritious food are far more numerous than popularly 

 supposed, but for extending industries in this direc- 

 tion botanic science must assume the guardianship. 

 In a technologic hall like this I should like to see 

 instructive portraits also of all the edible and noxious 

 plants likely to come within the colonist's reach. 



Among about one thousand kinds of Fig-trees which 

 (so Mons. Alphonse de CandoUe tells me), through 

 Mons. Bureau's present writings for the Prodromus, 

 are ascertained to exist, only one yields the flg of our 

 table, only one forms the famed sycamore fig, planted 

 along so many roads of the Orient ; only one consti- 

 tutes our own Ficus macrophylla, destined, in its 



