BEITISH FUNGI. 
323 
the Spoeifeeous Fungi is distinguished by the hymenium, or 
fruit-hearing part, being open to the air. Our common Mush- 
room is a familiar example of this group, and stands as a repre- 
sentative of the large family known as Agarics. These have a 
cellular stem, a pileus (cap), resembling the top of an umbrella, 
and lamellae (folds) underneath, upon which the cells are dis- 
posed, the spores springing from them ; these lamellae form 
the hymenium. In our autumn rambles we frequently come 
upon brilliant scarlet mushroom-shaped Fungi, their gaudy tops 
all flecked with white. These, as well as the Common Mushroom, 
belong to the Agaric group. They are enveloped in infancy in 
a volva (wrapper), which tears away as the pileus expands, 
leaving pieces like white felt adhering to the crimson covering. 
This Amanita muscifera is highly poisonous, and is used to 
make fly-poison in Britain ; but it is employed in Kamschatka 
to make an intoxicating drink. It thus exhibits a peculiarity, 
not rare in its class, of the qualities being wonderfully altered 
by climate. Many species, deleterious in then’ properties here, 
are wholesome in Italy, and the Fuegians are nourished by some 
which to us would be wholly poisonous. A nearly-allied species 
(Amanita rubescens ) with a brown pileus, but flecked in youth 
with scraps of its discarded volva, I have found in Kent and 
Yorkshire; its flesh, the substance between the pileus and the 
lamellae, turns red when it is broken : hence its name. 
The spores in this portion of the Agaric group are white. You 
may procure them for examination by leaving the young plant 
on a piece of coloured paper, where it will shed its spores. It is 
easy to examine them with a botanical microscope ; their shape 
and colour at once decide the species. Under fir-trees in 
autumn I have frequently seen crowds of stately Fungi of this 
Agaric type, the brown coating of the pileus torn into shreds. 
This is the Lepiota Racliodes ; it is round at first, but on reach- 
ing maturity the pileus expands, and becomes flat ; the thin 
shreds, which formed a velum (veil) in youth, stretching from 
the edge of the pileus to the centre of the stem, still hang as a 
frill on the latter, and, along with the white spores, fix its 
position early in the Agaric group. The White Agaric, which 
grows in clusters on tan in hothouses, is another Lepiota. 
In similar localities to that chosen by the L. Racliodes, we find 
the mouse-coloured Tricholoma humilis ; the folds are prettily 
turned where they meet the stem, and tinged with the colour 
of the pileus, and the velum is hairy. Frequently in woods and 
field-borders groups of smaller violet-coloured Agarics are seen, 
the pileus covered with plum-like .bloom. The lamelke are 
also violet-tinted, and the pileus often twists into eccentric 
shapes. This is the Glitocyhe laccatus. I remember being 
greatly attracted by a group of the salmon-coloured Gollyhia 
