THE common meadow mushroom varies considerably, but, “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_.”--_Badham’s Esculent Funguses of England._ [Illustration: Fig. 28. _Agaricus campestris_ (the True Meadow Mushroom). Pastures, autumn; colour, white or pale brown; gills, salmon, at length black; diameter, 3 to 6 inches. The spores are magnified 700 diameters.] There is scarcely any one in England who does not feel himself competent to decide on the genuineness of a mushroom; its pink gills easily distinguish it from a kindred fungus, _Ag. arvensis_, the gills of 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, or such singular diversities of aspect! The inference is plain; less discrimination than that employed to distinguish this would enable anyone who should take the trouble to recognise 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; there, 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; indeed, in such dread is this held in the Papal States, that no one knowingly would touch it. “It is reckoned one of the fiercest imprecations,” writes Professor Sanguinetti, “amongst our lower orders, infamous for the horrible nature of their oaths, to pray that 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. Mr. Worthington G. Smith, in his “Mushrooms and Toad-stools,” qualifies this statement of Dr. Badham. _Agaricus campestris_ is not generally appreciated in Italy, and indeed is seldom eaten, and never appears in the markets, for the simple reason that there would be no sale for it. There is an edict in existence ordering certain fungi to be thrown into the Tiber, but it is now, and has long been altogether effete; and whilst there is an abundance of _A. Cæsareus_ (avowedly the most delicious of all fungi) for the markets of Italy, it is not to be expected the consumption will be given up for another and little known species.