Both one and the other are far more numerous in this class of plants than in any other with which we are acquainted. As to odours, though these be generally most powerful in the fresh condition of the fungus, they are sometimes increased by drying it, during which process too some species, inodorous before, acquire an odour, and not always a pleasant one. Some yield an insupportable stench; the _Phallus impudicus_ and _Clathrus cancellatus_ are of this kind. A botanist had by mistake taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon awakened by an intolerable fœtor, and was glad to open his window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and the _Phallus_ together. Here he was disappointed; “sublatâ causâ non tollitur effectus,” the fœtor remaining nearly the same for some hours afterwards. A lady, a friend of mine, who was drawing one in a room, was obliged to take it into the open air to complete her sketch. As to the _Clathrus_, I have found ten minutes in a room with it nine too many: it becomes insupportably offensive in a short time, and its infective stench has given rise to a superstition entertained of it throughout the Landes, viz. that it is capable of producing cancer—in consequence of which superstition the inhabitants, who call it Cancrou, or Cancer, cover it carefully over, lest by accident some one should chance to touch it, and become infected with that horrible disease in consequence.[35] Batsch has described an Agaric[36] of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent headache made him desist, “vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore.” Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an unsavoury sense. This smells strong of onions,[37] that of cinnamon,[38] from which it takes its name; the _A. ostreatus_ (_auct. nost._) most powerfully of Tarragon; _A. odoratus_, and the _Cantharellus_, like apricots and ratafia (Purton); _Boletus salicinus_, “like the bloom of May” (Abbott); the _A. sanguineus_, when dry, savours of a stale poultice; _A. piperatus_, of the _Triglia_, or red mullet; the _Hydna_ generally give out a smell of tallow; moulds have their own smells, which are mouldy and musty; some exhale the smell of putrid meat, many the odour of fresh meal; the spawn of _A. prunulus_ and of the puff-balls (_Lycoperdons_) exhale an odour similar to the perfect plants; but the _Pietra funghaia_, filled with the spores of its own _Polyporus_, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any perceptible odour in _Boletus edulis_ or _B. luridus_, nor yet in the _A. Cæsareus_ when recently gathered. A word about their tastes will suffice: with so many smells, they must needs have flavours to correspond, and so they have; sapid, sweet, sour, peppery, rich, rank, acrid, nauseous, bitter, styptic, might be all found in an English “gradus” (though at present, I am sorry to say, without any lines from poets in whose writings they occur), after the word ‘Fungus.’ In a few,