Journal of Proceedings. lxiii
extremely abundant and very difficult to determine; some are very tender,
some very tough; some fleshy, others almost woody; some with an
inseparable cuticle, others with a separable one; some white and some
red under the cuticle; some mild and innocent, some so intolerably
pungent that if placed on the tongue, the skin of that delicate organ will
speedily peel off with a blister, and (like Russula emetica) show red
underneath! The lovely but untouchably glutinous Agaricus mucidus,
generally so frequent on the High Beach beeches, was this year nowhere
to be seen. The Falstaffean Boletus edulis was common, as well as B.
chrysenteron and B. subtomentosus. The milk mushrooms, Lactarii, were
abundant; the poisonous, livid, Lactarius lividus, was everywhere; L.
quietus, so mild that none need fear his quietus from consuming it, was
also very common ; "odour oily—like bugs," writes Mr. Berkeley ; other
authorities say the odour is "mealy, like recent farina." Perhaps the
"mealy-bug" was in view, but this is not stated ! Boletus scaber, grey,
ugly, sticky, and vile to the sight, albeit an edible species, was to be noted
almost everywhere ; and B. luridus was frequent, rapidly changing to
blue when cut or broken—a pretty toy for the ladies, quickly poisonous to
some people, but a delicious viand to the indurated hippogastrous fungo-
phagist. We must not, however, weary our readers by attempting a
catalogue of all the species met with ; a list of the forest Hymenomycetes
as far as at present ascertained, is given in this part of the ' Transactions ';
most of them are common in the woods every autumn, and many were
recorded in the account of last year's fungological ramble [Proceedings,
i. xlviii.]
Many of the visitors were struck with the beauty and luxuriance of the
golden Peziza aurantia, growing in large patches in and about the road
ruts and newly-cut water-courses, particularly in Fairmead Bottom and
near Golding's Hill.
But one remarkable fungus certainly demands a special paragraph in
our records, viz., Coprinus aratus. This is probably a rarity, and has not
been seen by the writer for the last twenty years. Mr. Berkeley first
found it "in a hollow tree." It was one of the first Fungi to attract our
notice when commencing the observation of the Cryptogamia, growing
twenty years ago at the bottom of a dung-heap in Nottinghamshire.
Coprinus aratus is one of the larger, deliquescent, fugitive species; it
grows to be six inches high, stem tapering upwards, very hollow and
fragile, a top from three to five inches across, tender, and breaking to
pieces with a touch. It lives less than a day, and in decay it curls up
into beautiful volutes, and distils itself away into drops of black and
tumid ink. Dr. Wharton had the pleasure of discovering the specimen
in Monk Wood, which was, alas! but a ruin, suffering from a dread and
fatal mycoclysm; however, the remnants were brought carefully home
for the microscopic examination. of the cystidia. As these organs (con-
cerning the exact nature of which much difference of opinion prevails,
although Dr. Cooke states that the evidence seems to be in favour of the