116 FUNGI. 
Fr., both of which become discoloured and bleeding when 
bruised, while Corticium lactescens distils a watery milk. 
Fungi in general have not a good repute for pleasant odours, 
and yet it must be conceded that they are not by any means de- 
void of odour, sometimes peculiar, often strong, and occasionally 
very offensive. There is a peculiar odour common to a great 
many forms, which has come to be called a fungoid odour; it is 
the faint smell of a long-closed damp cellar, an odour of mouldi- 
ness and decay, which often arises from a process of eremocau- 
sis. But there are other, stronger, and equally distinct odours, 
which, when once inhaled, are never to be forgotten. Amongst 
these is the fetid odour of the common stinkhorn, which is in- 
tensified in the more beautiful and curious Clathrus. It is very 
probable that, after all, the odour of the Phallus would not be so 
unpleasant if it were not so strong. It is not difficult to imagine, 
when one encounters a slight sniff borne on a passing breeze, 
that there is the element of something not by any means un- 
pleasant about the odour when so diluted; yet it must be con- 
fessed that when carried in a vasculum, in a close carriage, or 
railway car, or exposed in a close room, there is no scruple about 
pronouncing the odour intensely fetid. The experience of more 
than one artist, who has attempted the delineation of Clathrus 
from the life, is to the cffect that the odour is unbearable even 
by an enthusiastic artist determined on making a sketch. 
Perhaps one of the most fetid of fungi is Thelephora palmata. 
Some specimens were on one occasion taken by Mr. Berkeley into 
his bedroom at Aboyne, when, after an hour or two, he was hor- 
rified at finding the scent far worse than that of any dissecting 
room. He was anxious to save the specimens, but the scent was 
so powerful that it was quite intolerable till he had wrapped them 
in twelve thick folds of the strongest brown paper. The scent 
of Thelephora fastidiosa is bad enough, but, like that of Coprinus 
picaceus, it is probably derived from the imbibition of the ordure 
on which it is developed. There needs no stronger evidence 
that the scent must not only be powerful, but unpleasant, when 
an artist is compelled, before a rough sketch is more than half 
finished, to throw it away, and seek relief in the open air. A great 
