Page:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu/680

 TAB. CCCCII.

in November, 1808, by Miss Rackett, who obligingly sent me specimens from Spetisbury, in Dorsetshire. I was much surprised, when it first took my attention, to see so regular an Helvella with a smooth surface beneath; but on a more attentive examination I discovered veins beneath, which however are very inconspicuous, and only close to the edge of the pileus, projecting very little, but sometimes inosculating or branching, or having a shorter one of about a line in length intervening with the larger ones, which are about two or three lines in length. Three parts of the under side are characteristic of Helvella, and the fourth of Merulius; and this is the first species I have seen which seems a tie or uniting link between the two genera.

The specimens grew in a fir wood, as the leaves about them show, and there was a chalky marle about the root. TAB. CCCCIII.

gathered this undescribed Fungus at the bottom of a rotten bin in a cellar at Charlton House, Kent. When growing, it is perhaps one of the most elegant of the Fungus tribe, as it appears that a large cluster of it was found growing almost in every varied direction. The elastic, delicate, and soft leather-like pileus assumes a colour from perfect white to a pale yellow or buff. The pale veins beneath the smaller parts, and the browner older parts relieving them on a dark ground in the cellar, must have an extraordinary effect. The veins are deepish, and inosculate very much, and sometimes resemble the sets of lamellæ of the Agarics. In examining them with a high magnifier they appear clothed with hairs and glands—see the right hand figures. In colour and texture the Fungus has altogether a strong resemblance to Boletus lachrymans, or Common Dry-rot, tab. 113, in some states.