_The Veil._—Some funguses not only present the ring just mentioned, their hymenium or seed membrane being further protected from harm by a second investment, the veil, _Velum_, the stalk origin of which, when existing in conjunction with an annulus, is below it, but when the fungus is not annulate, the velum rises higher up on the stalk, stretches across to meet and is afterwards reflected over the whole surface of the pileus; on the expansion of the Agaric this investment is entirely broken up, and exhibits those well-known flocks, which have been called by the learned _verrucæ_, but which, as they are generally of a dirty leprous hue, and affect more or less of a circular arrangement, have procured for this whole tribe of Amanites in Italy the uncomely epithet of _tignosi_, or scald-heads. Where there has been both a volva and a velum, as sometimes happens in the same fungus, these verrucæ are of different colours according as they are remnants of the first merely, or of both together.[114] The velum in the subgenus _Limacium_ is a slimy coating adhering to the head of the fungus, which then looks as if it had been dipped in gum mucilage; this generally disappears after a time, leaving the epidermis dry, though sometimes, like the solid membranaceous veil, it is more or less persistent. The waxy covering on the pileus of the _Ag. virescens_, which after a time cracks and tessellates its surface, is only an exudation limited to the upper portion of the cap, and not a veil. _The Stalk._—This, which is absent in many parasitical funguses of the Order _Pileati_, when present, either effuses itself uninterruptedly into the substance of the pileus, which it then, in fact, _forms_, or else supports merely as on a pillar, a distinct line of demarcation showing where the fibres terminate. It assumes a great variety of forms, which serve in many instances to characterize species; besides which peculiarities there are others to be noted, as the mode of its insertion into the pileus, its having or not having a ring, the circumstance of its being scabrous, glossy, or tomentose, reticulated, spotted, or striped, of one colour above and another below, or of its changing colour when bruised, any of which may sometimes assist our diagnosis.