The typical form has the pileus and stem of a dingy or brown color and adorned with blackish fibrils, but specimens occur with the pileus white, yellowish, cinereous, grayish-brown or blackish-brown. I have never seen it of a true cervine color. It is sometimes quite glabrous and smooth to the touch and in wet weather it is even slightly viscid. It also occurs somewhat floccose-villose on the disk, and the disk, though usually plane or obtuse, is occasionally slightly prominent or subumbonate. The form with the surface of the pileus longitudinally rimose or chinky is probably due to meteorological conditions. The gills, though at first crowded, become more lax with the expansion of the pileus. They are generally a little broader toward the marginal than toward the inner extremity. Their tendency to deliquesce is often shown by their wetting the paper on which the pileus has been placed for the purpose of catching the spores. The stem is usually somewhat fibrous and striated but forms occur in which it is even and glabrous. When growing from the sides of stumps and prostrate trunks it is apt to be curved. Two forms deserve varietal distinction. Var. _al´bus_. Pileus and stem white or whitish. Var. _al´bipes_. Pileus cinereous yellowish or brown. Stem white or whitish, destitute of blackish fibrils. In Europe there are three or four forms which have been designated as species under the names of A. rigens, A. patricius, A. eximius and A. petasatus, but Fries gives them as varieties or subspecies of A. cervinus, though admitting that they are easily distinguished. None of these have occurred in our state. _Peck_, 38th Rep. N.Y. State Bot. Var. _visco´sus_. The normal character of the cuticle of the species is slightly viscid in wet weather, but the specimens we collected and photographed were exceedingly viscid. They also differed from the normal form in their lighter color, flesh much thicker at the disk and thin at the margins, and cuticle not appearing fibrillose. It is close to petasatus, but differs, however, in its narrower gills and in having no striæ. It is a good variety if it is not a good species. _Lloyd_, Myc. Notes. =Spores= 7–8×5–6µ _K._; 6–8×4–5µ _B._; 4×5µ _W.G.S._; 5.8×4.6µ _Morgan_. Frequent on decaying stumps, roots and wood, May to frost. _McIlvaine._ Its free gills should distinguish it from any Entoloma, though both have pink spores and eventually pink gills. Among the earliest of large species. The sight of it is stimulating to the mycophagist. He then knows the toadstool season to be truly opened. Caps only are tender. The stems are edible, but they are not of the same consistency as the caps, therefore will not cook with them. Fried in a buttered pan or broiled, they are exceedingly toothsome.