Page:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu/48

 of the vegetable matter of which this Boletus is composed. I believe this plant is not before described. I found a large mass spreading full three feet, last autumn, in the hollow of an old elm in St. James's park, forming a grotesque kind of cieling of different tints. About the sides of the cavity were beautiful varieties of Agaricus ulmarius, and I think a variety of Agaricus palmatus (tab. 62) hanging very fancifully, some resembling escallop shells, and others corallines, &c. prettily relieved by the dark red wood, making a kind of Fairy grot, remarkably clean, as if Puck had been

TAB. LXXXIX.

Bull. t. 124.

first shewn this plant on a bit of hazel flick, and have since found it in Lord Spencer's park at Wimbledon, on a Salix or willow, in various states, and in other places likewise. The Rev. Mr. Abbot favoured me with a specimen from Bedfordshire. These fungi vary very much in shape and size, and differ also in substance and texture according to the age or time of gathering. At first they are somewhat leathery, afterwards more horny. They are either stipitate or sessile; with or without a black base. The pores are irregular, but small. May not Boletus Calceolus, Bull. t. 360 and 445, fig. 2, and also Boletus elegans, t. 46, of the same author, belong to this species?

TAB. XC. Bull t. 463, fig. 1.

plentifully in autumn in a wet field by the New River, between Stoke Newington and Hornsey; the soil is an hard loam. The texture of this species is of a wax-like friable nature.