The =pileus= is convex, thick, soft and somewhat spongy, especially in large plants. The cap is dry and sometimes, especially when young, it is powdery; at other times, and in a majority of cases according to my observations, it is not powdery. It is smooth or minutely tomentose, sometimes the surface cracked into small patches, but usually even. The color varies greatly between yellowish brown to olive brown, fuliginous or nearly black. The =tubes= are yellow, adnate, the tube surface plane or convex. The spores are yellowish or ochraceous, varying somewhat in tint in different specimens. The =stem= is yellow, yellow also within, and beautifully reticulate, usually to the base, but sometimes only toward the apex. It is usually more strongly reticulate over the upper half. The stem is erect or ascending. The plant grows in woods, in leaf mold or in grassy places. It is usually single, that is, so far as my observations have gone at Blowing Rock. Berkeley and Curtis report it as cespitose. I have never seen it cespitose, never more than two specimens growing near each other. =Boletus ornatipes= Pk., does not seem to be essentially different from _B. retipes_. Peck says (Boleti U. S., p. 126) that "the tufted mode of growth, the pulverulent pileus and paler spores separate this species" (_retipes_) "from the preceding one" (_ornatipes_). Inasmuch as I have never found _B. retipes_ tufted, and the fact that the pileus is not always pulverulent (the majority of specimens I collected were not), and since the tint of the spores varies as it does in some other species, the evidence is strong that the two names represent two different habits of the same species. The tufted habit of the plants collected by Curtis, or at least described by Berkeley, would seem to be a rather unusual condition for this species, and this would account for the smaller size given to the plants in the original description, where the pileus does not exceed 5 cm. in diameter, and the stem is only 5 cm. long, and 6--12 mm. in thickness. Plants which normally occur singly do on some occasions occur tufted, and then the habit as well as the size of the plant is often changed. A good illustration of this I found in the case of _Boletus edulis_ during my stay in the North Carolina mountains. The plant usually occurs singly and more or less scattered. I found one case where there were 6--8 plants in a tuft, the caps were smaller and the stems in this case considerably longer than in normal specimens. A plant which agrees with the North Carolina specimens I have collected at Ithaca, and so I judge that _B. retipes_ occurs in New York.