

40 
British Fungi” Amanita pantherina is said on the authority of 
Mr. Worthington G. Smith to be “ not poisonous,” but however 
fungus proof Mr. Smith himself may have been when he wrote this 
since then it has caused so many deaths in France and Germany 



that it ranks between 4. phalloides and A. muscaria as one of the 
most lethal species. It is the first of these forms which Cooke 
Ill. pl. 6 probably represents. : 
Amanita strobiliformis Vitt. is a very uncommon species re=" 
presented in the “Illustrations” pl. 8 by a fungus with a dark 
reddish brown cuticle from a figure of Dr. Bull’s: this however 
is quite wrong, and was corrected by the issue of a second figure | 
plate 277, which shows a group of three said to have been found 
at King’s Lynn. This, however, is a mistake. I never found 
but a single specimen that was in 1871 on Ringstead Downs: 
it was solitary, fully expanded and flat on the top, but the warts 
were quite distinctive being large angular, persistent and mouse 
grey. 
Amanitopsis vaginata Roze. Fries in the ““Monographia”’ points 
out that Persoon divides this into two species (/ivida and spadicea), 
Schaeffer makes four of it and Secretan ten: so that he himself thinks 
the wisest plan is to group all forms under one. Whatever grounds 
the above authors may have had for so much sub-division yet I 
think the two common forms the grey and the brown (/vida and 
spadicea) have fair grounds for specific rank. Not only, as the 
master himself points out, does one appear earlier in the 
season than the other but also there are certain distinctive 
characters in the volva. In both one may often observe, as Dr. 
Stevenson says in “ British Fungi,” vol. 1, p. 11, that the ring 
though obsolete is present more or less conspicuously at the base of 
the stem enclosed in the volva: but more than thisas my esteemed 
friend, the Rev. Dr. Keith, whose practical knowledge of the 
Hymenomycetes of his own country is unsurpassed, pointed out 
to me in the reddish brown form (spadicea) there is a second volva 
inside the outer. In the grey form (vida) there are folds of 
wrinkles of considerable size on the inner surface of the volva. 
Amanitopsis adnata W.G.S. is an Amanita which seems to be 
getting more common than when it was first recognised by Mr. 
Smith from specimens from Somersetshire in 1871. It is well 
figured in Saunders and Smith’s “Mycological Illustrations” t. 20 as 
a ringless species. Five years later Dr. Quélet described and 
figured (Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1876, t. iii. f. 10) under the name of 
A, junquillea,a very similar fungus but with a ring. Last year J 

