llow close to the cuticle.

The gills are pure white, very symmetrical, various in length, the
shorter ones terminating under the cap very abruptly, crowded, free, but
reaching the stem, decurrent in the form of lines somewhat broader in
front, sometimes a slight tinge of yellow will be observed in the gills.

The stem is white, often yellowish with age, pithy and often hollow,
becoming rough and shaggy, finally scaly, the scales below appearing to
merge into the form of an obscure cup, the stem four to six inches long.

The veil covers the gills of the young plant and later is seen as a
collar-like ring on the stem, soft, lax, deflexed, in old specimens it
is often destroyed. The spores are white and broadly elliptical.

The history of this plant is as interesting as a novel. Its deadly
properties were known to the Greeks and Romans. The pages of history
record its undoing and its accessory to crime. Pliny says, alluding to
this species, "very conveniently adapted for poisoning." This was
undoubtedly the species that Agrippina, the mother of Nero, used to
poison her husband, the Emperor Claudius; and the same that Nero used in
that famous banquet when all his guests, his tribunes and centurions,
and Agrippina herself, fell victims to its poisonous properties.

However, it is said this mushroom is habitually eaten by certain people
as an intoxicant; indeed, it is used in Kamchatka and Asiatic Russia,
generally, where the Amanita drunkard takes the place of the opium fiend
and the alcohol bibber in other countries. By reading Colonel George
Kennan in his "Tent-life in Siberia," and Cooke's "Seven Sisters of
Sleep," you will find a full description of the toxic employment of this
fungus which will far surpass any possible imagination.

It caused the death of the Czar Alexis of Russia; also Count de Vecchi,
with a number of his friends, in Washington in 1896. He was in search of
the Orange Amanita and found this, and the consequences were serious.

In size, shape, and color of the cap there is similarity, but in other
respects the two are very different. They may be contrasted as follows:

Orange Amanita, edible.--Cap _smooth_, gills _yellow_, stem _yellow_,
wrapper _persistent_, _membranaceous_, _white_.

Fly Amanita, poisonous.--Cap _warty_, gills _white_, stem _white_, or
slightly _yellowish_, wrapper _soon breaking_ into _fragments or
scales_, white or sometimes yellowish brown.

Found along roadsides, wood ma