NOTES AND QUERIES ON RUSSULE. 
29 
technical subjects at the Woolhope Foray, and although dinners 
and soirees may, in a sense, be degraded from their high office 
by such an interpolation, it is a deed of necessity which excuses the 
demoralization. 
Opportunities for the discussion, face to face, amongst mycologists 
of points of difficulty are exceedingly rare, and indeed the present 
is almost the only chance from year to year of “ settling up,” 
so that it is almost too great a sacrifice to expect us to abandon it 
without a struggle. Into whatever branch of Natural History 
a person plunges, it is inevitable that the deeper he goes the more 
subtle will be the difficulties he encounters, and probably, at the 
same time, the keener will be his sense of the reconciliations which 
may be effected. Experience is a much more efficient guide than 
books, but this source of knowledge has no efficiency except for the 
individual, if driven to isolation, or condemned to a persistent 
monopoly of the results. It matters not that one has struggled 
with difficulties for years, until perhaps he sees bright glimpses of 
light through the darkness, if he is to die and make no sign. 
Labour will have been useless, save to him, if he fails to com- 
municate to others his hopes and fears, his interpretations of dimly 
discerned facts, or his suspicions of accepted tradition. This may 
be received as the best apology which can be offered for an unwel- 
come intrusion, and, with such a prospect before us, for the succeed- 
ing ten minutes we can only advise the uninterested to close their 
eyes for that brief period, and sink into the oblivion of profound 
repose. It will be admitted, without proof, that the study of the 
genus of Russula, amongst Fungi of the Mushroom type, is one 
which has been regarded as about the most difficult. Of course 
there are difficulties everywhere, especially when no effort is made 
to surmount them, but the difficulties in the way of the determina- 
tion of species, with any degree of personal satisfaction, in this 
peculiar genus must be tried to be appreciated. Cortinarius has 
its difficulties, for example, but they appear to dwindle in the face 
of those which beset Russula. This genus, nearly all the species 
of which were in the remote past lumped together under the one 
name of Agaricus integer , is remarkable in many particulars, but in 
none more than in the general sameness of habit, home, and 
structure, and the great variety of their coloration. None of the 
Agaricini present more brilliant colours, or in greater variety, and 
none perhaps less diversity in form. This seems to be an initial 
difficulty, for if form varies so little, and colour is not to be relied 
upon, how is determination to be accomplished ? It may be affirmed 
that, at the outset, there is less difficulty in fixing the genus than 
in almost any other, for the merest tyro is soon able to declare this 
or that to be a Russula , when he would be puzzled over a Maras - 
mius or a Cortinarius. With a Russula , then, pure and simple, 
there is no difficulty. No one ever encounters a difficulty of that 
sort, but when you ask “ What Russula ? ” then you are face to face 
with the “ cardinal sin.' 5 It is the determination of the species of 
