heterophyllus_, which tastes like the craw-fish when grilled; the _Ag. ruber_ and _Ag. virescens_, to cook in any way, and equally good in all;—these were among the most conspicuous of the _trouvailles_. But that the reader may know all he is likely to find in one single autumn, let him glance at the catalogue below.[197] He may at first alarm his friends’ cooks, but their fears will, I promise him, soon be appeased, after one or two trials of this new class of viands, and he will not long pass either for a conjuror or something worse, in giving directions to stew _toadstools_. As soon as he is initiated in this class of dainties, he will, I am persuaded, lose no time in making the discovery known to the poor of the neighbourhood; while in so doing he will render an important service to the country at large, by instructing the indigent and ignorant in the choice of an ample, wholesome, and excellent article, which they may convert into money, or consume at their own tables, when properly prepared, throughout the winter. NOTE ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE SPORES IN HYMENOMYCETOUS FUNGUSES. On the authority of Link, Fries, Vittadini, and other Continental mycologists, I have, in speaking of the spores of the genera _Agaricus_, _Boletus_, _Cantharellus_, _Hydnum_, and _Clavaria_, represented them as enclosed in cases (thecæ or sporanges). But from an interesting memoir, published by Mr. Berkeley in the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ “On the Fructification of the Pileate and Clavate tribes of Hymenomycetous Fungi,” which I had not then perused, it would appear that this arrangement only holds good with respect to _Pezizas_, _Helvellas_, and _Morels_, and not with respect to the above-mentioned genera, the spores of which are attached (generally in a quaternary and star form) to the ends of tubes, to which Mr. Berkeley has given the name of _sporophores_; a disposition which, as he observes, had been long ago pointed out by the great Florentine mycologist, Micheli. M. Montagne, in his ‘Recherches Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur l’Hymenium,’ while he confirms the fact of a quaternary disposition of the spores in general, thinks that during the _first_ stage of their development they are lodged _within_ the sporiferous tubes, to the mouths of which they afterwards adhere by means of short spiculæ or branchlets. These, like all other questions connected with the minute reproductive granules of funguses, require for their solution not only the most dexterous manipulation and the aid of the finest modern microscopes, but are likely even then to exercise the ingenuity of the curious. FOOTNOTES [1] The word _seed_ here, or wherever else introduced into the present work, is to be understood in its popular acceptation; correctly speaking, spores differ from seeds in the absence of an apparent embryo; but in a more catholic sense spores are seeds, since both are germinating granules, producing each after their kind.