^YDZmiKSS. 
Read by the President, Charles B. Plowright, M.D., to the 
Member s of the Norfolk mot Norwich Natural ids’ Society, 
at their Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting, held at the Norwich 
Castle- Museum, March doth, 1895. 
Ladies and Gentlemen — My first and most urgent duty this 
evening is to thank you for the great honour you have conferred 
upon me, by selecting me, as you did twelve months ago, to fill the 
office of President. Had tho status of our Society been less assured, 
or had its ‘ Transactions ’ a less extended circle of perusal, I should 
still have felt the distinction you then conferred upon me a great 
one. Under the existing circumstances, however keenly I might 
feel my unfitness for the office, the temptation to accept the honour 
was too great for me to resist. 
It will be within your remembrance that I endeavoured, at the 
commencement of the present session, to interest you in a subject 
to which I have devoted considerable attention, by giving a 
demonstration in the hall of the Church of England Young Men’s 
Society on Poisonous Fungi. By the co-operation of various friends, 
a representative collection of the best known deleterious species 
was exhibited, in juxtaposition with one of edible kinds. It was 
shown that in the vast majority of cases in which death ensues 
from eating poisonous fungi, it does so from the consumption of one 
particular species, and from one only, namely, Ayancus p hall aides. 
Specimens of this in all stages of development, and in all the 
varieties of colour which it assumes, were exhibited side by side 
with the true Mushroom. The structure of both species was further 
illustrated by the aid of diagrams. Ayancus plialloides has been 
VOL. VI. 
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