This offspring of the dunghill has some pretension to beauty on its first appearance, when it resembles an elliptical ball of loose cotton. So brittle and tender that it can scarcely be lifted without injury, and without soiling the fingers. It rapidly rises to the height of 4 or 6 inches, dissolves immediately into a bl ck fluid, and in a few hours returns to the corruption whence it sprung. It has great affinity to Ag. cylindricus, and LIGHTFOOT seems to have had both species in view when he assigned "dunghills" as a habitat for the latter.

50. A. plicatilis, stalk cylindrical, white, smooth, fistular, tender; pileus mouse-grey, membranous, remarkably thin and pellucid, furrowed; gills in pairs, broad, distant, grey, becoming black and sooty, loose, their ends forming a ring round the dilated head of the stem.WITH. iv. 331. Sow. Fung. t. 364.

Hab. Old pastures and road-sides. Aut.

Stalk 3 or 4 inches high, as thick as a crow quill. Pileus about 1 inch in diameter, convex, as thin as silk paper, the summit brown and smooth. The furrows are not owing to the gills appearing, and the gills themselves are formed by a duplicature of the pileus, for the layers can be easily separated.

*** With a lateral stalk or sessile.

51. A. flabelliformis, stalk lateral, short, whitish, furfuraceous; pileus leathery, white or brown, furfuraceous; gills yellowishbrown.-WITH. iv. 337. HOOK. Scot. ii. 24. Sow. Fung. t. 109. Ag. semipetiolaris, LIGHTF. Scot. 1030.

Hab. On moss-grown and decaying trees in woods. Houndwood.

Gregarious or clustered. Stalk as thick as a crow quill, tough, solid, downy at the base, and dilated at the top. Pileus fan-shaped, fissured and concave at its insertion, thin and leathery, scarcely 1 inch in diameter, often dashed with rust-like stains. Gills 4 in a set, scarcely decurrent, rather narrow, of a rich yellowish-brown, forming a fine contrast with the colour of the stalk and pileus. When moist, the hoary whiteness of this agaric disappears, and it becomes nearly a uniform brown.

52. A. moliis, sessile, ovate, tender; pileus white, downy or

smooth, with an involute margin; flesh white, thin; gills repeatedly dichotomous, close, rather narrow, varying from gamboge to saffron-yellow, or brown.-Sow. Fung. t. 98. (tab. nost. vii.)

Hab. In saw-dust, and on small pieces of rotten wood in the wine-cellar of Mr J. R. Dunlop.

A beautiful and very singular production. At first very cottony, with a much inflected border, and of a circular form, but when full-grown it assumes, pretty constantly, a spoon or mussel shape, and is fixed only by one end to the object on which it grows. I have seen it with a thick short stalk, and occasionally one fungus may be observed to grow from the gills of another.

This will probably be found to be a very imperfect list of the Agarics of N. Durham and Berwickshire, for in the immediate vicinity of Berwick there is no place very favourable for their production, and they cannot be easily procured from a distance in a state fit for examination. The genus, according to SPRENGEL, contains 646 species, and this is much below the number described by other authors!—another remarkable example of that variety in which Nature delights. "If we were to make a system on the subject, it should be, that she delights in variety, not in uniformity; in displaying the extent of her resources and means, not their limits; in difficulties overcome, in complexity, not in simplicity. She amuses us with two or three hundred Erica; with endless species of a genus, differing so slightly, yet still differing, that she compels us to wonder how she has produced variations so numerous, so slender, yet so marked. She even makes us wonder why all this is. There are as many hundreds of mushrooms; of a tribe, the simplicity of which would defeat our attempts to vary them, were the problem given, and which yet do not defeat our labours in distinguishing them. Nature is all variety, invention wealth, profusion. She riots and wantons in her own powers; she dazzles us by her fertility, and astonishes us by her resources. She scorns man and his philosophy, that would bind her down, and measure her by his own narrow powers and conception. This is Nature. These are the wonders of its Almighty Author."-Dr MACCULLOCH, but the quotation somewhat altered from the original.

93. CANTHARELLUS.

1. C. cibarius, wholly yellow; stalk central, solid, thickened upwards; gills decurrent, dichotomous; pileus fleshy, smooth, waved, depressed in the centre, the margin slightly involute.— GREV. Wern. Mem. iv. 368.; Fl. Edin. 396.; Crypt. Fl. t. 258. Merulius cantharellus, WITH. iv. 180. HOOK. Scot. ii. 25. Agaricus chanterellus, LIGHTF. Scot. 1008. Ag. cantharellus, Sow. Fung. t. 46.

Hab. Woods. Wooded banks opposite Longformacus.

On the Continent, in general, this is much eaten, and in some provinces the people are said to subsist upon it almost entirely. It appears to be used occasionally in the south of England, but never in the north, where indeed it is by no means common. It is rather tough, and, shortly after being gathered, exhales a pleasant odour like that of apricots.

2. C. lobatus, membranous, light wood-brown, roundish or earshaped, tapered at the base into an imperfect stalk; upper surface convex, naked; beneath veined, the veins branched, radiating.— GREV. Fl. Edin. 397. Merulius membranaceus, PURT. Mid. Fl. iii. 180. Helvella membranacea, Sow. Fung. t. 348.

Hab. Parasitical on living mosses. On Tortula ruralis on
Spittal Links, late in autumn.

94. SCLERODERMA.

1. S. cepa, "globose, subdepressed, very firm, smooth or warty, sessile, or with a very short thick stipes; root scarcely any.”GREV. Fl. Edin. 458.; Crypt. Fl. t. 66.

Hab. On the ground in plantations. About Netherbyres, plentiful, Rev. A. Baird.

95. LYCOPERDON.

OBS.-The Lycoperda have in general the form of a white ball, and grow on the ground. They are at first filled with a white spongy mass, which, in its progress to maturity, changes to a dirty green, and becomes ultimately dark brown and pulverulent,