I have not been fortunate in securing a sufficient quantity of fresh
specimens to test its edible qualities personally, but the testimony
received from those who have eaten it seems to point to the necessity
for moderation in eating and care in securing fresh specimens to cook.

FIG. 5. =Helvella crispa=. "_Crisp Helvella_."

_Genus Helvella_ Linn. The plants of this genus are usually small,
though a few of the species are of good size. They are not plentiful,
but they are very generally regarded as edible, the flavor bearing a
resemblance to that of the Morel. The cap has a smooth, not polished,
surface, and is very irregular, revolute, and deflexed, not honeycombed
like the Morel, nor showing the brain-like convolutions of the
Gyromitras. Color brownish pale tan, or whitish. The stem in the larger
species is stout, and sometimes deeply furrowed in longitudinal grooves,
usually white or whitish.

The species Helvella crispa is white or pallid throughout, cap very
irregular, sometimes deeply concave in the centre, with margin at first
erect, then drooping; again it is undulating, much divided and deflexed;
in fact, so irregular is the shape that scarcely two specimens will show
the cap the same in outline; stem stout and deeply channelled. Spores
elliptical, transparent. Habitat woods, growing singly or in groups, but
not caespitose.

Fig. 6, the ascus or spore sack and paraphyses.

_Genus Mitrula_ Fries. Soft and fleshy, simple capitate, stem distinct,
hymenium surrounding the inflated cap; head ovate, obtuse, inflated.--M.
C. Cooke.

Cooke says of this genus that it is scarcely so well characterized as
many with which it is associated, and that some of the species are
evidently so closely allied to some of the species of the genus
Geoglossum that it is difficult to draw the line of demarcation between
them, particularly so with the species Mitrula _pistillaris_ B. from
Louisiana.

The plants are very small, and though none are recorded as poisonous,
only one or two have any value as esculents.

FIG. 7. =Mitrula sclerotipes= Boudier.

The cap in this species is small, and the stem long and slender. The
spores are transparent, the asci club-shaped. The plants of this species
are always found springing from an oblong sclerotium; hence the name
sclerotipes.

Fig. 8 represents the sporidia enclosed in their asci with paraphyses
and individual spores, the latter magnified 800 diameters. Fig. 9,
secti