Lat. 58° Scotland, 36° 57° 64° Norway, 23 59 39 Sweden, 23 59 39 Russia, 15 60 37 30° Cairo, 57 88 72 Macao, 64 82 73 Rio Janeiro, 68 78 74 Havannah, 71 82 77 Bourbon, 71 80 77 "Winds, water, and animals, are also instrumental in disseminating plants. Many seeds, with winged and feathery appendages, are easily wafted about; others are carried by rivers and streams, and some can be transported by the ocean currents to a great distance, with their generating powers unimpaired." MUSHROOMS OR AGARICS (_Order_ FUNGI). Every year--principally in autumn--we are startled by hearing or reading of cases of poisoning by mushrooms. Erudite connoisseurs, however, who have profited by Dr Badham's book on "Esculent Fungi," do not suffer themselves to be intimidated by these sad narratives, though, unfortunately, they are frequently too well founded; because they know how to distinguish the good from the ill, the true from the false, the edible from the poisonous mushroom. But this security ought not to embolden the inexperienced amateur in risking his life for the sake of a delicacy. It is true, nevertheless, that we frequently see men's lives exposed for something less. "Look, what a splendid mushroom I have discovered!" a lady said to me, the other day; a lady who knew something of flowers, but nothing of _cryptogams_. "Take care!" I replied, taking from her hand the supposed prize; "this is the false mushroom; and would suffice, if served up at your table, to poison yourself and all your guests." I ought here to observe that my friend had narrowly escaped death two years before, through regaling herself with a dish of mushrooms of very dubious character. Among the symptoms which she experienced, and which she described with medical exactness, she particularly dwelt upon the cold sweats, accompanied by a sentiment of undefinable terror, which is nothing else than the dread of death: it was the special symptom of poisoning with an unwholesome fungus.