THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
163
Unprepared for what proved to be periods of drenching rain, a party
of some eighty members and visitors assembled at Loughton Station at
10.41 o'clock, and a further score of participants in the Foray joined up
in the afternoon; but a certain proportion of these left for home when the
discomfort of walking through wet bracken and grass became too evident
and only some seventy persons stayed out the full programme for the day.
The referees were as follow:—
For the Basidiomycetes and Ascomycetes, Messrs. F. G. Gould, Arthur
A. Pearson, F.L.S., and J. Ramsbottom, O.B.E., Sec. L.S.
For the Myxomycetes, Miss G. Lister, F.L.S.
The headquarters were, as usual, the Roserville Retreat at Highbeach,
and here the spoils of the day were brought for exhibition by the somewhat
wayworn, but not discouraged, collectors and were identified by our
expert referees. Considering the recent drought, the total yield was by
no means small.
Tea was served at 4.30 o'clock, following which a meeting of the Club
was held, with the President in the chair.
After welcoming members of other Societies who were taking part in
the Foray by invitation of the Club, the President called upon the referees
in turn for their report on the results of the day's collecting.
Mr. Gould remarked on the abnormally dry character of the past
summer, the drought having had a markedly retarding effect upon the
development of mycelium; perhaps because of this, Amanita rubescens,
which is usually common earlier in the year, even as early as August, had
been found to-day in great abundance in the middle of October. He
compared the yields of funguses obtained by the British Mycological
Society a week or two before in the Northumberland woods with those
of the present Foray, and was of opinion that Epping Forest was probably
the finest hunting ground in the whole of England for these plants.
Mr. Pearson noticed the prevalence that day of forms of the genus
Mycena. He had just returned from a fungus-hunt in the Pyrenees, and
remarked on the identity of many of the forms with those common in
Epping Forest: referring to the edible fungi, he had noticed, as a curious
instance of national preference, that all the Lactarius deliciosus gathered
for sale in the Pyrenees were sent to Barcelona, while the various Boletus
were invariably consigned to France.
Mr. Ramsbottom said he had been very interested in examining the
edible forms of funguses collected by the foreigners who regularly search
Epping Forest in the autumn for these delicacies. He noted that Italians
specialised in Boleti of various species, while a Lithuanian collector, whom
he had that day interviewed, was taking Paxillus involutus, Armillaria
mellea, and Collybia maculata, Referring to Mr. Pearson's remarks on
the geographical range of toadstools, he said that all temperate climates
have much the same fungus flora, some 75 per cent. of forms being abso-
lutely the same; yet some interesting variations may be noted. For
instance, Amanita muscaria, which we had found to-day quite commonly,
had an orange-coloured cap in Southern Canada, while in Northern Canada
it was bright red, as here. In spite of the remarkably dry condition of
the soil, many fungi were in evidence in various districts of England this
autumn.