Page:The Garden Mushroom.pdf/12

 perfect form, with an erect robust stipes or stem, one inch or more high, crowned with a round, convex, thick, fleshy, white head or hat, pileus, with lamellæ, or gills, underneath, of a reddish flesh colour; it is supposed the flower and seed, if any, are concealed between the lamellæ. When the plant arrives at full growth, the head expanding almost flat, forms a large flap, and falls on the ground over the supposed seed.

This is a fugacious plant of quick growth and short duration, advancing first like small white round knobs, which, increasing fast in size, and sometimes partly accomplishing their growth within the surface, suddenly make their eruption from the earth above half-grown, in the morning, where there was no sign of them the night before. But in the regular beds they arise variously, spreading over the whole surface, some as small as