42 
ON PRESERVING FUNGI 
colouring, even if not artistic, would be more useful than 
mere description of general appearance. Of no less im¬ 
portance is the addition of notes, giving such particulars as 
cannot be conveyed by the sketch, and these would embrace 
a statement of habitat, whether growing on the ground or on 
wood. Amongst other details, it should be stated whether 
the pileus was dry, or moist, or glutinous ; whether the 
odour was agreeable, or foetid, or indistinct; whether the 
taste was mild, or acrid, or pungent; and whether the gills 
exhibited any tendency to deliquesce. Finally, if the 
drawing was not coloured, then the colour or the pileus and 
stem must be indicated as explicitly as possible, and not 
vaguely as red, brown, or grey, but what particular tone of 
each colour—whether bright red or dull red, dark red or light 
red, vermilion or crimson, and so on, with any other colour, 
so that at any time the sketch might be completed in colour 
and made to represent the species.” 
Those who despair (after one or two failures) of ever 
making a good representation of a fungus may take heart 
from reading Dr. Plowright’s remarks on this head in his 
presidential address at the Dublin meeting of the British 
Mycological Society (1898): 
“ It is very curious how, after a little practice, one is able 
to catch the character of a fungus on paper, and so, although 
many of our sketches—at least mine were, I know—were 
innocent of perspective, devoid of detail in the matter of 
shading, badly drawn, and worse coloured, yet they formed 
the basis from which it was possible to construct very 
useful figures. . . . The point I wish to emphasize is this : 
That, however rude a sketch may be, it has a definite value, 
and I would impress upon all those who attempt a study of 
the Hymenomycetes that they should make coloured out¬ 
lines of any species that may be new to them. The trouble 
is not great, but the value, as these sketches accumulate, 
considerable. Those of us who have devoted any length of 
