CHAPTER III 
HABITATS 
T HE young mycologist will quickly observe that most 
fungi, like flowering plants, have their distinctive 
habitats— e.g., that the fungus flora of a fir wood is largely 
of a different character from that of a beech wood, and that 
shade-loving species seldom occur in open pastures. The 
appended plates indicate a few species characteristic of each 
of these localities. 
Concerning the habitats of agarics, Dr. M. C. Cooke com¬ 
puted that about 64 per cent, are “ terrestrial, or nominally 
so; but we cannot separate those which flourish on old 
charcoal-beds, on decaying sawdust, or vegetable humus.” 
About 7 per cent, flourish habitually on dead leaves, or on 
the dead stems of herbaceous plants, and nearly 30 per cent, 
grow upon decayed wood. 
Some agarics chiefly affect the neighbourhood of human 
habitations. I may instance Coprinns atramentarius , which 
has on more than one occasion demonstrated very forcibly 
the extraordinary lifting power of some fungi. A group of 
sporophores lifted a large mass of asphalt paving in 
Hampton Road in 1889 ; a similar occurrence took place 
at Dunstable in 1899. 
Merulius lacvymans, the “ dry-rot ” fungus, is essentially a 
domesticated species, if the term may be allowed, occurring 
only on worked wood in houses, ships, etc. 
Plate X. depicts certain small agarics with distinctive 
habitats, but it must be observed that a species occasionally 
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