The words _champignon_ and _mushroom_ have both a French origin, though, like the corresponding derivatives from the Greek and Latin, they too have come to signify things different from what they originally designated; _champignon_, for example, of which _champ_ would seem to be the root, is _generic_ in France. The ‘Traités sur les Champignons’ of Bulliard, Persoon, Paulet, Cordier, and Roques, are treatises of funguses _in genere_; whilst in England we restrict the word _champignon_ to one small Agaric, which, as it grows in the so-called “fairy-rings,” is hence named _Ag. oreades_. Again, there can be no doubt that our word _mushroom_ (which, as contradistinguished from _toadstool_, is so far generic) comes from the French _mouceron_ (originally spelt _mousseron_), and belongs of right to that most dainty of funguses, the _A. prunulus_, which grows amidst tender herbage and _moss_ (whence its name), and which is justly considered, over almost the whole continent of Europe, as the _ne plus ultra_ of culinary _friandise_. It abounds in various parts of England, being everywhere trodden underfoot, or reaped down, or dug up as a nuisance, while the rings which it so sedulously forms are as sedulously destroyed. The very odour which it exhales under these injuries, which the French call “un parfum exquis aromatisé,”[12] and the Italians, “un odore gratissimo,”[13] is in England occasionally cited to its disadvantage in confirmation of its supposed noxious qualities. Thus, while we use the word _mushroom_, which is the proper appellation of _this_ species, for another (very good, no doubt, but wholly unlike it in its botanical characters, flavour, and appearance), this neglected, and ignorantly neglected, species, finds itself deprived of its rightful name, and proscribed as a toadstool. The origin of this last word, _toadstool_, which makes them seats or thrones for toads, does not quite satisfy me, I confess, though there be doughty authorities for it in Johnson’s Dictionary and in Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen’! “The grisly todestool grown there mought I see, And loathed paddocks lording on the same;” and, though an anonymous Italian authority declares that, in Germany, they have actually been seen sitting on their stools,[14] still, even in Germany, it must be admitted that they do not use them as frequently as we might expect, had they been created for this end. In that most grisly and ghastly waxwork exhibition at Florence, representing a charnel-house filled with the recent victims to a raging plague, in every stage of decomposition, the toad and his stool are not forgotten; but the artist, who had here to deal with matter, and to consult what it would bear, has not put his toads upon these brittle stools, lest, giving way, both should come to the ground; he has been content to convert them into toad-umbrellas, and to spread them as an awning over their heads.[15] THE RANGE OF FUNGUS GROWTHS.