CRYPT0GAM1A. FUNGI. Agaricus. 
197 
Ag. rheoi'des. Gills yellow, very irregular: pileus rich orange 
yellow: stem yellow. 
Gills fixed, yellow, numerous, very short, two or four in a set, but very 
irregular. 
Pileus orange yellow, convex, scurfy or scaly, sloping; edge very much 
turned in, four inches over. Flesh yellow. 
Stem solid, yellow, fibrous, often crooked and tapering at the bottom, com¬ 
pressed, hunched, and variously distorted, two inches and a half high, 
one and a half diameter. 
Curtain yellow, tough, permanent. Growing in clusters, in which many of 
the plants are much smaller, and the heads nearly globular, but three or 
four attain the sizes mentioned above. The whole plant both within and 
without is nearly the colour of rhubarb. 
(Yellow-curtained Rhubarb Agaric. E.) On the stumps of old haw¬ 
thorns, and decaying alders, Edgbaston park; and in the road from 
Birches Green to Curdworth, Warwickshire. Sept.—Oct. 1793. 
Ag. xerampeli'nus. (Schieff.) Gills golden yellow, four in a set: 
pileus fine lake red, to rich orange buff, convex, bossed: stem 
buff and rose, tapering upwards. 
Sowerby 31— Schceff. 247— Battar. 4. C. just evolved from its wrapper . 
Mich. 77. 1— Clus. Hist. 272. 273. 
Gills fixed, bright golden yellow, just under the edge of the pileus nearly 
orange, very regularly disposed four in a set; none of them branched, 
fleshy, brittle, serrated at the edge with a paler cottony matter. 
Pileus fine like red, changing with age to a rich orange and buff, and every 
intermediate shade of these colours which render it strikingly beautiful: 
convex, centre bossed, edge turned down, three to four inches diameter, 
clothy to the touch. Flesh pale buff. 
Stem, solid, nearly cylindrical, but gradually tapering upwards, rich buff, 
shaded with fine rose red; three to five inches high, half an inch diameter. 
Flesh pale, buffy, spongy, elastic. 
The most splendid of all the Agarics. It is said to be common in Italy, 
and to be brought to the markets for sale ; and that the ancient Romans 
esteemed it one of the greatest luxuries of the table. Having been made 
the vehicle for poison to Claudius Caesar, by his wife Agrippina, it has 
been celebrated by the satiric pen of Juvenal, and the epigrammatic 
muse of Martial. See Schaeffer, p. 65, chiefly taken from Clus. Hist. 273, 
where the reader will find several other curious circumstances respecting 
it. But I am satisfied that these authors have mistaken the species, 
and that the above accounts ought to be transferred to Ag. deliciosus, 
which is still as highly esteemed in modern Italy as it was in ancient 
Rome. The Ag. xerampelinus is eatable, but it has a strong heavy 
earthy taste, and is not at all agreeable. 
This plant must be very rare in this country, as it is unnoticed by any of 
our botanists. It was first found by my daughter in the Red Rock plan¬ 
tation at Edgbaston, several growing together of different ages and 
sizes, in a dry soil, where either a larch or a fir tree had been cut down 
four years before. A few days afterwards we found it again in company 
with Mr. Stackhouse, but none of our specimens had either curtain or 
ring. The specimens first gathered afforded a milky juice in greater 
abundance than I had ever seen in any other species, but these the next 
day showed no signs of milk, neither were those gathered a few days 
afterwards on the same spot at all lactescent. This observation first taught 
