There is scarcely any one in England who does not feel himself competent to decide on the genuineness of a mushroom: its pink gills are carefully separated from those of a kindred fungus _Ag. Georgii_, which are of a flesh-coloured grey, and out of the pickings of ten thousand hands, a mistake is of rare occurrence; and yet no fungus presents itself under such a variety of forms, of such singular diversities of aspect! the inference is plain; less discrimination than that employed to distinguish this, would enable any who should take the trouble, to recognize at a glance many of those esculent species, which every spring and autumn fill our plantations and pastures with plenteousness. Neither is this left to be a mere matter of inference; it is corroborated in a singular manner by what takes place at Rome; here, whilst many hundred baskets of what we call toadstools are carried home for the table, almost the only one condemned to be thrown into the Tiber, by the inspector of the fungus market is our own mushroom:[158] indeed, in such dread is this held in the Papal States, that no one knowingly would touch it. “It is reckoned one of their fiercest imprecations,” writes Professor Sanguinetti, “amongst our lower orders, infamous for the horrible nature of their oaths, to pray that any one may die of a _Pratiolo_;” and although it has been some years registered among the esculent funguses of Milan and Pavia (on the authority of Vittadini), it has not yet found its way into those markets. Besides the general botanical characters which apply to all varieties of _Ag. campestris_, almost every writer has felt the necessity of pointing out several peculiarities, belonging to each. Common to all are a fleshy pileus, which is sometimes smooth, sometimes scaly, in colour white, or of different shades of tawny, fuliginous, or brown; gills free, at first pallid, then flesh-coloured, then pink, next purple, at length tawny-black; the stem white, full, firm, varying in shape, furnished with a white persistent ring; the spores brown-black, and a volva which is very fugacious. _Var._ A. _edulis_. This, which is our button mushroom, lies at first concealed in the earth, at which period it presents the appearance of a puff-ball; at a second stage of its growth, it exhibits a white, smooth, and continuous epidermis; gills rounded off at their posterior end; a large, somewhat funnel-shaped, _double_ ring, free, and somewhat moveable on the stem, which is short and thick. This, according to Vittadini, is the most sapid variety of any. _Var._ B. _pratensis_. This differs from the last in the duskier hue of its pileus, which is moreover scaly, and has ragged margins; the gills are ventricose; and the ring, which is subfugacious, is cortinarious, _i. e._ of a cobweb texture, and reflexed; the stalk is longer than in the last species, and tapers towards the base; the colour of the flesh in this variety is vinous or even sanguine. _Var._ C. _silvicola_.