to recognize it after its peculiar appearance is once known. The 
typical form has the cap adorned with numerous minute tufts of 
brown or blackish hairs or fibrils, which are often so crowded on 
and near the centre as to give that part a darker hue than the 
rest. Sometimes these fibrils are so dense and matted that they 
give a woolly appearance to the surface of the cap, and in other 
cases they are entirely wanting, and the cap is smooth. An 
umbo is.occasionally present in the centre of the cap, and gen- 
erally mature plants have the margin more or less striated. The 
color varies from a pallid or whitish hue to a dark reddish-brown, 
but the most common color is a brownish-yellow, that suggests 
the name “honey-colored.” The flesh is white or whitish, and 
the taste in the raw state is rather harsh, acrid or unpleasant. 
The gills are at first whitish, but they become more dingy with 
age, and are then often spotted or stained with reddish-brown. 
Sometimes they are slightly excavated or notched on the edge 
just before reaching the stem; again they run evenly to it, and 
often extend downwards a little on it—that is, they are 
decurrent. They are sometimes dusted by the abundant 
white spores. The stem also varies from pallid to brown. 
It is usually more or less fibrillose or floccose, and often 
shows a white or even an olive-green tomentum at its base. It 
is stuffed or hollow. Its collar is either of a thick cottony tex- 
ture or thin and membranous. Sometimes it is so thin, and even 
webby, that it soon disappears. 
The plants grow scattered or in gregarious groups or in clus- 
ters. The latter is the most common method, and these clusters 
are sometimes so large that a single tuft would nearly fill an 
ordinary water-pail. Generally the cap is 1 to 6 inches broad, 
and the stem 1 to 6 inches long and one-fourth to three-fourths 
of an inch thick. This mushroom does not often appear in 
abundance until near the end of summer or the beginning of 
autumn, but specimens have occasionally been seen in June. 
The tufted forms grow especially about stumps or on old decay- 
ing prostrate trunks of trees. It seems to grow equally well in 
woods and in open places. Monstrous forms sometimes occur, 
and an abortive form, not distinguishable from the abortive form 
of Ciitopilus abortivus, is sometimes found growing with well- 
developed. forms. These are whitish, somewhat globular, one 
inch or more in ‘liarmeter, with no definite dintinction of cup and 
stem. The taste is farinaceous, and the edible qualities are quite 
as good as in the normal form. 
The following varieties may be noticed: 
49 
