Within a few years much attention has been given in England to the edible fungi, and societies and clubs have been formed for the purpose of making the useful species better known by means of exhibitions, excursions, and dinners, at which the various edible fungi take the place of meats. So important is this subject regarded in England that in 1873 the royal horticultural society held an exhibition at which prizes were awarded for collections of both edible and poisonous fungi. The list of species which may be used as food is now large, but the great obstacle to the popularizing of them is the difficulty of distinguishing between the safe and dangerous ones. In America they have for the most part been regarded as noisome and disgusting by the great mass of the people; they have been usually despised as the unsightly evidences of decay, rather than eagerly collected as delicious food, which many of them are. During the late civil war the Rev. M. A. Curtis of Society Hill, S. C, who had long been our best instructed mycologist, turned his attention to the fungi as a source of food supply, and found that a great number of our native species were not only edible but highly palatable. He embodied his observations in a work, but unhappily died without seeing its publication.

The mushroom proper {agaricus cam-pestris) grows wild in old fields and pastures, but is propagated by planting its spawn, which is the mycelium of the plant, in hotbeds. Although this is the most widely used, many other species are equally excellent. The truffle {tuber cibarium) grows beneath the ground, and is eaten with avidity by different animals. (See Mushroom, and Truffle.) Their reputation as aphrodisiacs is thought to be unfounded, having its origin in the old doctrine of resemblances. Polyporus tuberaster grows from the celebrated fungus stone pietra funghia, which is a mass of earth traversed by the mycelium of the plant; the latter is watered from time to time, and produces successive crops. The heads of poplar trees are watered in autumn, and they then bear the agaricus caudicinus, greatly esteemed. Blocks of the hazel tree are singed over straw and watered, and they produce in abundance the polyporus corylinus. Among other species eaten, the principal are agaricus prynulus, orcella, procerus, and exquisitus, lactarus de-liciosus, cantharellus cibarius, boletus edulis, marasmius oreades, hydnum repandum, Jistuli-na hepatica, morchella esculenta, and helvella crispa. These are all fleshy fungi.

Some of the most virulent poisons are found among fungi, and many fatal accidents have arisen from the eating of poisonous species, yet fungi which are known to be ordinarily injurious are eaten with impunity by some. Rye meal containing large quantities of ergot procluces a terribly disgusting and fatal gangrenous disease. Pickling and salting renders many fungi innocuous. Agaricus muscarius is one of the most injurious; yet it is used as a means of intoxication by the Kamtchat-dales. One or two of them are sufficient to produce a slight intoxication, which is peculiar in its character. It stimulates the muscular powers, and greatly excites the nervous system, leading the partakers into the most ridiculous extravagances. The only fungus used at the present day in medicine is the er-got of rye, sometimes employed in cases of protracted labor. Several others have been used in times past, like the cordy-ceps Sinensis, a spha3-roid species parasitic on a caterpillar; but these are now thought to be of no value. The lycoperdons or puff-balls have been used as styptics. Some po-lypori make admirable razor strops when sliced with a sharp knife.

Polyporus fomen-tarius and igniarius have for many years furnished the punk which is used as tinder, the corky portion being pounded till its compact mass of soft,silky fibres becomes loosened and flexible, and is sometimes used to make caps and other articles of clothing. Agari-cus muscarius is used as fly poison.-Some fungi are among the greatest pests of the agriculturist. The rusts, smuts, and bunt of grain are all fungi of the genera uredo, ustilago, and puccinia. Their mycelium penetrates the tissues of the plants, destroys their vitality, and bursting through their cuticles covers them with myriads of their orange, brown, yellow, or black spores. They probably induce decay by a chemical influence which they exert on the juices of the infested plant, as well as by their mechanical interference with its organism. It has been a question how their spores are carried into the tissues, where their earliest growth is entirely separated from the outer atmosphere. But when we remember their extreme minuteness, we can understand that they may be drawn up with the fluids which enter their roots, or receive them directly into their tissues through the infinity of breathing pores with which the surfaces of the plants they infest are perforated.

For many years agriculturists have had a prejudice against the common barberry as being injurious to wheat, and in some states it has been prohibited by law from growing near wheat fields. This has been looked upon by botanists as a whim which had no foundation in fact; but in this case, as in others, popular belief was right, although the reason it assigned for the effect, in this case, the pollen of the barberry, was wrong. It is now found that the fungus so common upon the leaves of the barberry is one of the several forms of the wheat smut. The mildews of the grape and other fruits are my-celoid growths, which in certain stages have been thought to be perfect plants (oidium), from their possessing a power of reproduction. Certain cells take on a vesicular growth filled with a mass of minute bodies which were thought to be the true fruit. But the later observations of Leveille, Tulasne, and others, have shown that these are arrested stages of growth of an entirely different ascigerous genus, erysiphe. These produce their fruit in minute black pustules, from the base of which peculiar radiating processes arise, sometimes of great beauty.