In this book I comply with these requests. I have selected over seven hundred of the most plentiful and best varieties for the table, from my toadstool bill of fare; and I describe and caution against several species, some of which are deadly in their effects, if eaten; others of which induce ill-effects more or less serious. One thousand species and varieties are named and described. Birds, flowers, insects, stones delight the observant. Why not toadstools? A tramp after them is absorbing, study of them interesting, and eating of them health-giving and supremely satisfying. CHARLES MCILVAINE. INTRODUCTION America is without a text-book of the American species of Fungi, among which the edible and poisonous varieties are found. Many excellent but expensive foreign volumes describe species common to both continents, and several special but widely scattered monographs have been published here. The need of the mycologist, mycophagist and amateur toadstool student is a book giving the genus, names and descriptions of the prominent American toadstools whose edibility has been tested, or whose poisonous qualities have been discovered. The absence of such a book, and the universal and rapidly-growing interest all over the United States in edible fungi, have led to the publication of the present work, which includes every species known to be esculent in North America. As a precautionary measure, full explications of all those known or suspected to be poisonous are included. Many species found in this country only have been described and named by various authors, from the time of Schweinitz (1822) to the present day. These have been published in the botanical magazines and in the papers of scientific societies and colleges. The greater number have as author Professor Charles H. Peck, New York State Botanist, who has contributed an annual report each year from 1868. These appear in the reports of the State Museum of New York, and coming from the pen of our ablest mycologist are of great value to everyone interested in the study. The classifications and (in many instances) modified descriptions by such an eminent authority upon fungoid growth should therefore be the guides to American forms, that the confusion created by numerous descriptions of the same fungus by different observers may be avoided. Professor N.L. Britton, editor of the Torrey Botanical Club, has courteously given permission to use the descriptions of new species given in its instructive Bulletins. Professor A.P. Morgan and Laura V. Morgan, with equal courtesy, grant the use of text and illustrations contained in the most complete monograph published upon the Lycoperdaceæ (puff-balls, etc.) of America.