With the fogs and rains of autumn the fungologist's harvest begins. A few fungi (large and small) appertain to the spring, and some species may be found in every month of the year; but it is not till September has well set in, or October is reached, that the glut of fungi is really upon us. Fungi may generally be met with in abundance for three months of the year; viz. from the latter half of September till the middle of December, the month of October taking pre-eminence for producing the greatest abundance of species. A season of moderate heat and rain is the most productive, for an excessive amount of either dryness or moisture appears to destroy the fecundity of the mycelium, which it must always be remembered is alive and at work (underground) the whole of the year; for, as a matter of course, this year's fungi is produced from last year's spores. These spores are set free in autumn, and at once vegetate and form masses of mycelium, from which next years crop must spring; just as the seeds of our wild annuals are self-sown at the fall of each year and first germinate at that season. It is a great mistake to suppose that Agarics and Boleti wait till the leaves fall, so that they may prey upon them; for, as a rule, the larger fungi never live upon the leaves of the same year as that in which they (the fungi) come up; fungi live upon the fallen leaves of the previous autumn. The spring and summer months will sometimes prove very productive, especially after stormy weather; but the collector must always bear in mind that fungi, like all other things, have their _seasons_. I have known the fungus harvest quite over by the end of August, and I have also known it not come in before December: it depends entirely upon a certain amount of atmospheric heat and moisture. A damp summer and stormy August will produce the crop at the beginning of September; but a dry autumn, without much rain till November, will delay the fungus crop till Christmas. Some species appear regularly _twice_ a year from the same mycelium; once after the rains of March and April, and again in October. This is the case with _Coprinus atramentarius_, which I have growing (originally from spores) in a bed of my own garden.