~Lentinellus cochleatus~ (Fries) Karsten forms irregular lobed and twisted, flattened or funnel-shaped dirty brownish caps with a fragrant smell, toothed gill-edges and almost spherical, small, hyaline spores measuring 5 × 4 µm which become bluish grey in iodine solutions. _Lentinellus_ apparently has very close affinities to _Auriscalpium_, ‘the Ear pick fungus’, (p. 158) both in the structure of the spores and the anatomy of the fruit-body. ~Lentinus lepideus~ (Fries) Fries forms very tough fruit-bodies with convex or flattened, pale yellowish caps and stems ornamented with dark tawny or brown scales. The stem is often eccentric and buried in cracks or soft rotten wood on which it grows; the spores are non-amyloid. It grows on pine stumps but also on decaying or unprotected railway sleepers and wooden paving blocks, joists, etc., made of conifer wood. When the fungus fruits in a darkened environment, such as a cellar, the mushroom-like fruit-bodies are not produced but are replaced by slender branched structures similar to the ‘Stag’s horn’ or ‘Candle-snuff fungus’ (p. 206), or to certain of the Fairy Club fungi (p. 172). Similar growths have been recorded for _Polyporus squamosus_ which grows on hard wood timber and is described in detail later (p. 140). ~Crepidotus mollis~ (Fries) Kummer Soft slipper toadstool Cap: up to 45 mm across and in tiers, sessile, shell-shaped or kidney-shaped, smooth, rubbery and brownish ochre in colour. Gills: pale buff then cinnamon-brown and finally flushed snuff-brown, thin and crowded. Flesh: watery, gelatinous beneath the skin of the cap and whitish buff. Spore-print: warm brown. Spores: ellipsoid, smooth, medium-sized, pale buff under the microscope and 8-9 × 5-5·5 µm in size. Easily recognised by the soft elastic cap which can be stretched without breaking, the brown gills and pale buff spores. (See Plate 49, p. 153.) _Illustrations_: LH 177; NB 145³; WD 69¹. The artificiality of classifying all those agarics with both a spoon-shaped or bracket-shaped fruit-body, and a reduced (or lacking) stem is further exemplified by the presence of similar genera in other groups of fungi. For instance _Claudopus_ is typified by pink, angular spores (Plate 28) and _Clitopilus_ is characterised by longitudinally ridged spores, i.e. they are not angular in all optical sections but only when seen end on (see p. 101). An example of the former is _C. parasiticus_ (Quélet) Ricken which grows on dead remains of woody fungi, and of the latter _C. passackerianus_ (Pilát) Singer which may invade mushroom beds. Both species are quite small though the last fungus is similarly coloured to the more familiar _Clitopilus prunulus_ (Fries) Kummer, ‘The Miller’, so common in woods and fields.