‘“MUSHROOMS.* 
` BY JOHN L. RUSSELL. 

A PLEASANT little treatise on some of the more prominent 
species, and one well adapted to afford just such information 
as those who are not strictly botanists might need. 
Some faint idea of the immense number of these obscure 
but interesting plants may be obtained from the title-page of 
the Rev. M. J. Berkeley’s “Outlines of British Fungology, 
containing the characters of above a thousand species, anda 
complete list of all that have been described as natives of the 
British Isles.” (London, 1860.) Of these 1,000 are large 
and conspicuous, and 1,406 are smaller and even minute, of 
which the species. of Spheria alone which speck the leaves, 
and fruit of various plants in Great Britain, are 203 m 
number. In Fries’ great work on the species of a single 
family, the Hymenomycetes, we find an enumeration and 
description of 2,545, embracing, for the most part, the larger 
inds known to him in various regions of the globe. (Ep 
crisis. Upsalie, 1836-38.) In the year 1831, Lewis D. & 
Schweinitz communicated to the American Philosophical 
Society, Philadelphia, a list of 3,043 species of fungi whieh — 
` came under his observation around Bethlehem, Pennsylvan™ 
The list has been greatly enlarged since by the labors of 
The singularly varying forms, under which man 
Fungi appear, have given rise to species which abe 
search has reduced to some previously described. 
the researches of the Tulasnes are elucidating this ‘ 
the subject, and exhibiting most interesting details, * 
it the Ameri- 
.new as well as novel fields of investigation awal 

, Cooke. Wilt 
* A Plain and Easy Account of the British Fungi, etc., etc. By M C. Cao ; 
twenty-four colored plates. 12mo, pp. 148. London, 1862. 
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