BUFF CAPS AND IVORY CAPS. 133 



XX.— BUFF CAPS AND IVORY CAPS. 



Most persons who have taken sufficient interest in 

 growing fungi to notice them will be familiar with 

 the form and colour of a peculiar buff tinted mush- 

 room, which comes up on lawns and pastures in the 

 autumn. Several will have been seen growing 

 together amongst the grass, so that occasionally a 

 good basketful may be collected in ten minutes. We 

 have called this the " buff caps " (Hygrophorus pra- 

 lensis) for lack of a better name. And yet the colour 

 is hardly " buff," and hardly fawn colour, and not 

 flesh colour, but something of a combination of all, 

 which goes by the name of gilvous. The mushroom 

 in question is a clean, neat-growing species, with a 

 cap two or three inches broad, smooth and soft, like 

 a tan coloured kid glove, and at first very convex, 

 but afterwards more flattened. When cut through it 

 will be observed that the flesh is very thick, 

 especially at the centre of the cap, tapering down- 

 wards into the stem, which is rather short, and a little 

 lighter in colour than the cap, and thinnest at the 

 base. The gills are distant from each other, so that 

 the cross veins can be seen which run between them, 

 comparatively broad, running some distance down 

 the stem, so that they are arched, until when old the 



