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formerly known as Ag. gilvus; classically, gilvus was an epithet of a dun or cream-coloured horse. Alutaceus has rather a wide signification, but it seems best translated by buff or tan. When it is lighter and yellower it is helvolus, the epithet of "white" wine and "white" grapes in Pliny: in describing Cortinarius iliopodius, Fries explains helvolus by alutaceus, but there must have been some distinction in his mind between the two terms, for he uses the compound, helvoloalutaceus as dusky cinnamon," a fact which appears to show that even Fries himself was not so clear in the application of colour-names as we should like to be. Crustulinus seems to be the colour of toast, much darker and warmer than that of a cracknel-biscuit. Ochraceus is yellow-ochre, and melleus, honey-yellow, is dingier and less yellow; luridus, sallow or wan, is still paler and less yellow, almost like that which builders call "stone-colour." Rhabarbarinus is the light brownish-yellow of Turkey rhubarb. Isabellinus is a light brownish-yellow or dirty cream-colour. The word has a history, and was first used of unwashed linen. The Infanta of Spain, daughter of Philip II., made a vow in 1601 that she would not change her linen until her husband had taken Ostend; as that city did not fall till three years after, she must have saved her washing-bill at the price of some discomfort.

Fawn-colour does not fall very conspicuously into any of my three divisions of browns, but most of us know the hue so denoted; cervicolor, cervinus, and hinnuleus all seem to mean much the same. Cervinus is applied to the darkest shade, and Fries explains hinnuleus as a tawny-cinnamon (p. 380).

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The brownish ochrey yellow colour known to artists as gallstone," only with an inclination to a dirty green, is denoted by ictericus or icterinus.

The brightest of the red-browns is lateritius, the colour of old red tiles; its paler shade, that of Ag. (Hypholoma) sublateritius is familiar to us all. Testaceus, brick-coloured, is a reddish brown or rusty bay, almost Venetian red. Fulvus is tawny, the colour of a lion, and is also known as leoninus or leochromus; fulvellus seems to be paler aud redder, and very like that which gives its name to Ag. (Collybia) nitellinus, dormouse-colour. Helvus is a light bay or "cow-colour," like vaccinus. Badius is a reddish-brown, the colour of a "bay" horse; spadiceus, date-brown, is a duller and darker shade. Hepaticus, liver-coloured, is a darker and redder brown than bay. Ustalis denotes a warm reddish bay, between red-ochre and brown-madder.

Of the true browns, the type is brunneus, Vandyke-brown. Coffeatus, like roasted Coffee, is very similar. Ligneo-brunneus is a lighter or wood-brown. The apparently extinct Ag. (Lepiota) Paulletii is described by Fries as colore "de noisette," which must mean a light nut-brown or hazel. Umbrinus is a dark brown, brown umber, the colour of a "brown" horse; indeed, the scale of colours used in describing horses, from dun through chestnut, bay, and brown to black, shows how, in ordinary language, the name of a colour is always taken as of a very extensive connotation, because it is hard to decide where one colour ends and another begins.

We now come to the reds and their varieties. The palest is carneus, with carneolus and incarnatus, flesh-coloured. Hysginus is a more distinctly red flesh

colour. Roseus and rosaceus imply a rosy pink; rosellus seems to mean inclined to pink. There must be some difference between the shades of scarlet or vermilion distinguished as cinnabarinus and miniatus, because each is compounded with the other as cinnabarino-miniatus, but I have not succeeded in finding out what the difference is. Coccineus, cochineal red, is a deeper scarlet, carmine. Sanguineus, blood-red, is nearly similar. Rufus, ruber, and russus are less pure reds. Rubescens is merely becoming red. Rubellus, rufidulus, and rufulus are reddish. Rubens is a brick-red; rutilus, rutilans a purplish brick-red. Vinaceus is reddish rather than claret-coloured, but it does not seem to be ever used in descriptions. Less pure reds are castaneus, chestnut ; ferrugineus and rubiginosus, rust-red; and puniceus, which is an almost purple red.

Blues are so rare among Fungi that very few names are required for them. Cæruleus is a pale blue, azure; cærulescens is becoming blue. Azureus, lazulinus, and cyaneus are rather ultramarine. Cyanellus is almost sky-blue. Purpureus is a bluish purple; violaceus, violet, is a reddish purple; lilacinus is lilac or mauve. Ianthinus and ionides alike refer to a violet colour. Porphyro-leucus should mean purplish-white, but Ag. (Tricholoma) porphyroleucus, Bulliard, is described by Fries as "sooty or dusky, becoming red."

The type of the greens is viridis, but it is of no definite hue; virescens and viridans mean turning green. Aerugineus and aeruginosus refer to a verdigris or rather bluish-green. Olivaceus is olive-green, olivascens denoting the preliminary stage of becoming green. Pausiăcus describes precisely the same green, from pausea or pausia, a variety of olive; for Fries says of Ag. (Clitocybe) pausiacus that the gills are olivaceous.

Before I had made the attempt, of which you now have the outcome, to elucidate Fries' use of the names of colours, I was unwilling to ask for much of your indulgence. But now that I have done my best, and feel how poor my best has been, I must ask you to look on my essay, not as a final determination, but as a framework about which can be arranged the experience of others. No invention is ever so valuable to its inventor as it is to those who can bring it to perfect use. May what I have tried to accomplish here be at least the opening of the door for the truth that must in the end prevail.

THE BRITISH SPECIES OF NIDULARIA.

By Mr. WM. PHILLIPS, F.L.S., &c.

THE genus Nidularia, Fr., is represented in this country by a single species, Nidularia pisiformis, Tul., described and figured by the late Mr. Fredrick Currey in a Paper read before the Linnean Society, June 18th, 1863, which appeared in Vol. xxiv. of the Transactions of that Society. The specimen was found at St. George's Hill, Weybridge. I will reproduce the whole of Currey's description, which is very complete, and serves to fix satisfactorily the character of the species. "Peridium subrotund, slightly flattened, varying in different specimens from one-twelfth to one-fourth of an inch across, brown or brownish-white, woolly, tuberculate when ripe, from the pressure outwards of the sporangia; indehiscent, opening by irregular fissures; sporangia enveloped in jelly, subrotund or discshaped, their outline forming a broad ellipse (almost a circle) with a major axis of about one-twentieth of an inch, shining, of a rich dark brown colour, sometimes hollowed inwards on one side, but not umbilicate, and showing no trace of any elastic cord, such as exists in Cyathus. Sporidia colourless, slightly varying in shape, globose, pear-shaped or elliptical, produced on sterigmata, 0·0002 to 0.0003 inch across.

"On pine-chips, St. George's Hill, Weybridge, May and October, 1862.”

"I was at first inclined to consider this a new species; but after discussing it with Mr. Berkeley, we came to the conclusion that it could not be separated from Nidularia pisiformis, Tul. N. pisiformis is described as gregarious, and is said to have grown on clayey ground mixed with wood shavings. Tulasne does not figure N. pisiformis, not having seen it, but only adopts Usteri's account, describes and figures it in his Annalen der Botanik (Vol. i., tab. 1, fig. 1), under the name of Granularia pisiformis. Usteri's description does not very well accord with his figure, but the latter is so rough and imperfect as to be hardly intelligible. All the specimens of the plant above-described were solitary, and they grew only on fir-chips and fir-leaves, not on the ground. When the sporangia and the enveloping jelly are dispersed, a hollow skinny cup remains attached to the place of growth. The number of the sterigmata appears to vary from one to four. Upon the basidium, which is figured, I could only make out two. This species does not appear to have been noticed since Usteri's publication of it, now a great many years ago."

Accompanying this full and satisfactory description are figures of the species, showing a single individual the natural size, the same magnified, and one basidium having two spicules bearing spores at their apices.

In September last, the Rev. Dr. Keith, of Forres, N. B., was good enough to send me a specimen of Nidularia, which he found growing on a wet decayed stick of pine-wood, and which presented such differences from the above as led me to suspect that it was new to our Flora.

The peridia are confluent, or very rarely separate, nearly globose when young, afterwards subturbinate, from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch across, adhering to the wood by a broadish base, pale brown, or fawn-coloured, clothed on the exterior with a matted filamentous coat, the filaments of which are thickened towards their extremities and furnished with divaricate or deflexed spines; the peridia dehisce more or less irregularly at the top, exposing a mass of sporangia embedded in a tenacious pale transparent jelly. The sporangia are disc-shaped, at first dirty-white, afterwards shining dark chestnut-brown, somewhat rugose. A transverse section of the sporangium exhibits three distinct layers of tissue; the exterior thin, tough, fibroso-cartilaginous, which is underlaid by a fibrosocellular sub-gelatinous layer, from which arises the third, or hymenial layer, consisting of upright closely-packed clavate or cylindrical cells-the basidia-which have on their summits 1, 2, to 3 spicules, on the points of which are produced the almost spherical spores. Intermixed with the basidia there occur at distant intervals cystidia, which are ventricose cells with an elongated narrow neck, truncate at the summit, resembling a Florence flask, except that the base is narrowed into a stem. These cystidia are twice the length of the basidia, and have usually fine granular matter collected in a little heap at their summits, similar to what we often see in the Agaricini, and to which, as you know, Mr. Worthington Smith attributes very important functions. I may venture to say that these cystidia have never been previously observed in the hymenium of a Nidularia. I have carefully compared this specimen with N. pisiformis, a specimen of which was lent me by Mr. C. E. Broome, and it differs in the following particulars:The receptacles are confluent, the exterior is not tuberculate, there are cystidia in the hymenium, and the spores are smaller than in N. pisiformis.

If then my examination and comparison of these plants be correct, we have in Dr. Keith's Scottish specimen a second species added to our British list, namely, Nidularia confluens, Fries et Nordh. The description of this species is as follows:

Rootless, peridium subglobose, even, villous, sporangia orbicular, wrinkled, brown.-Fries et Nordh.

On fragments of wood, growing in company with Crucibulum vulgare. Autumn.

Nidularia confluens, Fries et Nordh, Symb. Gast., p. 3; Tulasne, Ann. Sc. Nat., 1884, p. 96. Nidularia farcta (confluens), Fries, Sys. Myc., ii., p. 301.

Habit nearly the same as Cyathus scutellaris, Roth. Without roots. Sporangia (peridia) nearly round, aggregate, somewhat confluent, extremely irregular, villous, almost even, persistent, twice the size of a pea, dirty white, glabrous inside, at length broad, and ruptured in a lacerated manner. No epiphragmium indeed, but above the sporangium is composed as it were of a double membrane which however is obsolete. Sporangiola (sporangia of Tul.) orbicular, lentiform, altogether destitute of an umbilicus, about one line broad, wrinkled, glabrous (fixed by a slender thread at the margin ?). Nucleus thin, black.-Fries et Nordh.

There is a third species, which, for some reason unknown to me, has been

dropped in the fifth vol. of English Flora, by Mr. Berkeley, as well as in his Outlines of Fungology. Nor is it to be found in Dr. Cooke's Handbook. I allude to Nidularia dentata, of Withering, described by him in the 3rd edition of An Arrangement of British Plants (Vol. iv., p. 357,-1796), as follows :-

"Turban-shaped; pale buff; rather woolly; segments or teeth at the edge, broad, spear-shaped, regular. Membrane tough, whitish. Seeds, or capsules

reddish brown."

"Several growing together on rotten twigs near the grate at Edgbaston

Pool."

Tulasne in his important Monograph of the Order Nidularieæ accepts this species with the remark non vidimus. It is true the description of Withering is very inadequate, no mention being made of the presence or absence of a funiculus on the sporangium, nor the presence or absence of an epiphragmium, which are the characters by which to distinguish Nidularia from the allied genera Cyathus and Crucibulum, and probably it is on this ground the species has been dropped.

The mode of dehiscence, however, is so remarkable, "segments or teeth at the edge broad, spear-shaped, regular," that it will be well for Mycologists to keep the characters before their minds while in search of these plants, for I know of few more interesting results of our labours than the recognition and restoration to our flora of a long overlooked or neglected species of the older botanists of our country.