This mushroom is very pleasant to the taste when raw as well as when cooked. It is found in light woods or on the borders of woods where the soil is somewhat friable, generally solitary, but sometimes two or three are found clustered together. The plants are sometimes so large that two or three of them would make a very good meal. Specimens have been found with the cap measuring 8 to 9 inches across when expanded, the stem varying from 6 to 8 inches in height, and from 1 to 3 inches in thickness. When young the plants are generally snowy white throughout, changing with age to a dingy white or cinereous hue. The specimens figured in the plate formed one of a cluster of three mushrooms of this species found growing in the fir woods of the District of Columbia. During some seasons I have found the _strobiliformis_, or "Fir-cone mushroom," fairly plentiful in some parts of Maryland, and in other seasons it has been rare. The whole plant when young is enclosed in a white membranous wrapper. Although this species is very generally recognized by mycologists as edible, I would advise great caution in selecting specimens for table use, since there is a dangerous species which might be mistaken for it by one not familiar with the characteristics of both species; I refer to a form of Amanita muscaria with ochraceous yellow cap which, when faded or bleached by the sun and rain, sometimes approaches, in tint, the dingy white of old or faded specimens of the _strobiliformis_. Both species have _white gills_, _white stems_, and _white flocculent veil_. The volva is evanescent in both, leaving traces of its existence in concentric ridges at the base, and part way up the stem. In the species _strobiliformis_, the flesh of the cap is white throughout, as well as the cuticle. In the yellowish _muscaria_, the flesh _immediately_ beneath the cuticle of the upper surface of the cap is yellowish, frequently deepening at the disk to orange hue. The cap of Amanita _muscaria_ is very attractive to flies, but proves to them, as also to roaches and to some other insects, a deadly poison. The juice of _strobiliformis_ is not poisonous to flies. This fact may aid in identifying the species. Subgenus _Amanitopsis_ Roze. The species of this subgenus were formerly included in Amanita. The characteristic which separates it from Amanita is the _absence of a ring on the stem_. The gills are free from the stem, the spores are white, and the whole plant in youth is encased in an egg-shaped volva.[A] [A] Although this subgenus is not included in M. C. Cooke's analytical key to the order of Agaricini, published with his kind permission in No. 3 of this series, he now includes it as one of the subgenera which should have a place in that list. Amanitopsis _vaginata_ Roze. Edible.