By the seventeenth-century poet William Browne, bard of "Britannia's Pastorals" and "The Shepherd's Pipe," the mushroom is thus alluded to: "Down in a valley by a forest's side, Near where the crystal Thames rolls on her waves, I saw a mushroom stand in haughty pride As if the lilies grew to be his slaves." Then, after praising the daisy, violet, and other flowers whose beauty was overpowered by the fungus, he thus concludes a much-admired sonnet: "These, with a many more, methought complained That Nature should those needless things produce, Which not alone the sun from others gained, But turn it wholly to their proper use. I could not choose but grieve that Nature made So glorious flowers to live in such a shade." Where noisome toadstools crowd out violets and daisies, it may be right for poets to protest. As it is, we have little in the description to guide us to the species, whether it was a desirable or an undesirable kind. There is no allusion as to its toxic properties, nor yet to its colour; and its seeming size--if the simile of the lilies be considered--may only be a license which poets are allowed. But the bard of Tavistock, whose "oaten melodye" still rings sweet and clear, has written too lovingly of trees to suppose he could perceive no use or beauty in a striking vegetable growth; and therefore the particular form he refers to would appear to have been a noxious one. Surely, it was not the lovely mauve-coloured Cortinarius, that seeks the "forest's shade"; the expanded pea-green cope of the sweet and nutty Russula; or the glowing orange hood of the dulcet Lactarius that incurred his disapproval! Nor can one conceive it to have been the tall-stemmed, fluted-capped Coprinus, or the stylish parasolled Lepiota, which stands as upright as the stilted Bartramian sandpiper, and that is held in equal esteem by the epicure. Rather let us suppose it was the great poison Amanita, which has slain its thousands, and whose brilliant reds and salmons and yellows, and white scales borne aloft on their hollow pedestal, cry aloud from every gill, "Beware!" Or if it was not this or the equally deadly A. phalloides on which his graceful sonnet was based, it must have been the Lycoperdon which cast its shade upon the violets--the giant puff-ball that the poet did not recognise as a valuable food product when neatly sliced and fried, and that it is still the rule to kick out of one's way.