[Illustration: FIGURE 54.--Amanita muscaria. View of upper side of cap (natural size). Colors as in Fig. 53. Copyright.] Figures 52--54 are from plants (No. 2065 C. U. herbarium) collected in an open woods near Ithaca. For the poisonous property of the plant see Chapter XX. =Amanita frostiana= Pk. =Poisonous.=--According to Dr. Peck, who published the first description of this plant, it grows in company with _Amanita muscaria_, but seems to prefer more dense woods, especially mixed or hemlock woods, and occurs from June to October. The plant is 5--8 cm. high, the caps 2--5 cm. broad, and the stems 3--6 mm. in thickness. The =pileus= is "convex to expanded, bright orange or yellow, warty, sometimes nearly or quite smooth, striate on the margin; =lamellæ= white or tinged with yellow; =stem= white or yellowish, stuffed, bearing a slight, sometimes evanescent annulus, bulbous at the base, the bulb _slightly margined_ by the volva; spores globose," 7.5--10 µ in diameter. He notes that it appears like a small form of _A. muscaria_, to which it was first referred as _var. minor_,--"The only characters for distinguishing it are its small size and its globose spores." It is near _A. muscaria var. puella_ Pers. I have several times found this plant in the Adirondack mountains, N. Y., and Ithaca, and also at Blowing Rock, N. C. The volva is often yellowish, so that the warts on the pileus are also yellow, and sometimes the only remnants of the volva on the base of the stem are yellow or orange particles. The annulus is also frequently yellow. In our plants, which seem to be typical, the spores are nearly globose, varying to oval, and with the minute point where the spore was attached to the sterigma at the smaller end, the spores usually being finely granular, 6--9 µ in diameter, and rarely varying towards short elliptical, showing a tendency to approach the shape of the spores of _A. muscaria_. The species as I have seen it is a very variable one, large forms being difficult to separate from _A. muscaria_, on the one hand, and others difficult to separate from the depauperate forms of _A. cæsarea_. In the latter, however, the striæ are coarser, though the yellow color may be present only on portions of the pileus. The spores of _A. cæsarea_ are from globose to oval, ovate or short elliptical, the globose ones often agreeing in size with the spores of _A. frostiana_, but they usually contain a prominent oil drop or "nucleus," often nearly filling the spore. In some specimens of _A. frostiana_ the spores are quite variable, being nearly globose, ovate to elliptical, approaching the spores of _A. muscaria_. These intermediate forms should not in themselves lead one to regard all these three species as representing variations in a single variable species. With observations in the field I should think it possible to separate them.