324 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Fusipes, growing out of the bole of a tree in an enclosed part 
of Hope Park, near Edinburgh. I fee’d a “ laddie ” to climb 
for them, and admired their umber inflated stems greatly when 
in my hand. A few of the stems were long, and had burst 
with the wet, showing their hollow structure. The lamelke 
were pale yellow. An allied species (C. Velutipes ) is common 
on stumps in woods, the velvet-like texture of its dark-brown 
stem forming a pleasing contrast with its orange cupola-shaped 
pileus ; while myriads of the fragile mouse-coloured Mycoena 
alcalinus cluster on the same rotten stump, quivering in every 
breeze, and perishing by dozens as you try to gather them. 
Some of this numerous clan of Agarics are without a stem alto- 
gether, as the little lead-coloured Pleurotus appUcatus, and the 
pale-brown biting Panus stypticus. 
Turning from the Agarics with white spores, we are next 
presented with a group bearing salmon spores. The little 
brown “ toadstool,” with pileus uo bigger than your finger end, 
which you find on lawns, Naucaria melinoides, is one of these. 
Our friend the Mushroom, Psalliota campestris, has purplish 
brown spores. It is said that sheep eat the Mushroom ; and 
I remember being earnestly warned by a countryman not to eat 
any Fungus I gathered in a field where sheep were ; “ for it can’t 
be the right kind, or they would have eaten it up,” he said. 
The merits of this friendly Mushroom are numerous ; to us it 
alone redeems its tribe from a great part of the stigma resting 
upon it. Stewed or made into ketchup, or pickled in the infant 
or “ button ” state, who can praise it sufficiently ! And then 
the pleasure of going- out mushroom-gathering, basket in hand 
and emulation in the heart ; of wandering through the breezy 
pastures, reconnoitring from the tops of gates for white cupolas, 
and being quizzed unmercifully should they turn out to be 
lumps of chalk ! 
Who is there that has not noticed the cone-like Fungi 
springing suddenly after rain upon the lawn, often pressed so 
closely together as to push each other sadly out of shape ? 
These vary from the typical Agarics in then- lamellae melting 
away, so that the spores flow away in the liquid substance of 
the folds, leaving, in the place of the Goprinus atramentarius, a 
mere stain, as of ink, upon the sward. Closely allied to this, 
though varying greatly in appearance, is a tiny Fungus which 
takes up its abode on the plaster of dwelling-houses. I was 
much puzzled on one occasion to find a starry network on my 
bedroom ceiling ; it was as if threads extended in every direction 
from a round nucleus in the centre, like a flattened pea, and- 
branches issuing from the threads, and interlacing wove the whole 
into a circular network. The little plant in the centre was the 
Goprinus radians ; the branches, etc., were mycelium (spawn) 
