Page:Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms.djvu/636

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TAB. CCCL.

AURICULARIA phosphorea.
BYSSUS phosphorea. Linn. Mant. p. 271.

The young and most common state of this plant has the appearance of a Byssus, and often seems little else than the purple colour caused on the wood by the damp or the gallic acid, and the friction and iron of a saw. When older it becomes of a more vivid deep purple, and often under favourable circumstances forms an Auricularia; which appearing to be its most perfect form, we refer it to that genus. Its fibres penetrated the substance of the paper it was wrapped up in, and began to form on the opposite or outer lide, being shut up in a damp box. The whole is of a more or less dense cottony or fibrous texture.


TAB. CCCLI.

PEZIZA domestica.

This has been known about ten years on new plaistered cielings, or walls which admit the rain. It first clothes the places that have been thus wetted, with a fine cottony or membranous film, nearly as white as the plaister, which is in a short time partly covered with salmon-coloured knobs. These at length form a kind of upright Peziza, externally villose.


TAB. CCCLII.

PEZIZA quina.
HELVELLA equina. F.Den. tab. 779. Fig. 3.

Frequent on horse-dung in damp shady places, and generally in abundance. It seldom expands, is of a dull fox colour, and rough or hispid on the outside.