Both one and the other are far more numerous in this class of plants than in any other with which we are acquainted. As to odours, though these be generally most powerful in the fresh condition of the fungus, they are sometimes increased by drying it, during which process too some species, inodorous before, acquire an odour, and not always a pleasant one. Some yield an insupportable stench; the Phallus impudicus and Clathrus cancellatus are of this kind. A botanist had by mistake taken one of the former into his bedroom; he was soon awakened by an intolerable foetor, and was glad to open his window and get rid of it, as he hoped, and the Phallus together. Here he was disappointed; “sublat caus non tollitur effectus,” the foetor remaining nearly the same for some hours afterwards. A lady, a friend of mine, who was drawing one in a room, was obliged to take it into the open air to complete her sketch. As to the Clathrus, I have found ten minutes in a room with it nine too many: it becomes insupportably offensive in a short time, and its infective stench has given rise to a superstition entertained of it throughout the Landes, viz. that it is capable of producing cancer—in consequence of which superstition the inhabitants, who call it Cancrou, or Cancer, cover it carefully over, lest by accident some one should chance to touch it, and become infected with that horrible disease in consequence.[35] Batsch has described an Agaric[36] of so powerful and peculiar a smell, that before he could finish his picture (for he was drawing it) a violent headache made him desist, “vehementi afficiebar capitis dolore.” Of the others, some are graveolent in a savoury or in an unsavoury sense. This smells strong of onions,[37] that of cinnamon,[38] from which it takes its name; the A. ostreatus (auct. nost.) most powerfully of Tarragon; A. odoratus, and the Cantharellus, like apricots and ratafia (Purton); Boletus salicinus, “like the bloom of May” (Abbott); the A. sanguineus, when dry, savours of a stale poultice; A. piperatus, of the Triglia, or red mullet; the Hydna generally give out a smell of tallow; moulds have their own smells, which are mouldy and musty; some exhale the smell of putrid meat, many the odour of fresh meal; the spawn of A. prunulus and of the puff-balls (Lycoperdons) exhale an odour similar to the perfect plants; but the Pietra funghaia, filled with the spores of its own Polyporus, is without smell. When fresh, there is scarcely any perceptible odour in Boletus edulis or B. luridus, nor yet in the A. CÆsareus when recently gathered. A word about their tastes will suffice: with so many smells, they must needs have flavours to correspond, and so they have; sapid, sweet, sour, peppery, rich, rank, acrid, nauseous, bitter, styptic, might be all found in an English “gradus” (though at present, I am sorry to say, without any lines from poets in whose writings they occur), after the word ‘Fungus.’ In a few, generally of an unsafe character, there is little or no taste in the mouth while they are being masticated, but shortly after deglutition, the fauces become dry, and a sense of more or less constriction is apt to supervene, which frequently continues for some time afterwards.