mature plants become
discolored, and pulverulent with the rusty or ochraceous colored spores.
The veil is very delicate, resembling a spider's web. It is not concrete
with the cuticle of the cap, but extends from its margin to the stem, in
the young plants sometimes concealing the gills, but disappearing as the
cap expands. Sometimes a few filaments are seen depending from the
margin of the cap or encircling the stem.

In the young plants of this genus the gills vary very much in color.
They are whitish, clay-color, violet, dark purple, blood-red, etc.,
according to species, but, as the plants mature, the gills become dusted
with the rust-colored falling spores, and with age usually become a
rusty ochraceous, or cinnamon color. The stem in some of the species is
distinctly bulbous and in others equal, cylindrical, or tapering. In
identifying the species it is necessary, in order to ascertain the true
color of the gills, to examine the plants at different periods of
growth.

The genus Cortinarius is a large one, and contains many beautiful
species. It is mainly confined to temperate regions. Not a single
species has been recorded as found in Ceylon, the West Indies, or
Africa, but one tropical species is found in Brazil. Nearly four hundred
species have been described, and over three hundred and seventy of these
belong to the United States and Europe. A few are found in the extreme
southern or temperate portion of South America, and several are reported
from a temperate elevation among the Himalayas. Sweden and Great
Britain, with their temperate climates, claim a large proportion of the
European species. Not many of the Cortinarii have been recorded as
edible, and none as dangerous. The Rev. M. J. Berkeley records, however,
a case of poisoning by one of the species, C. (Inoloma) _bolaris_ Pers.,
which though not fatal was somewhat alarming, the symptoms being great
oppression of the chest, profuse perspiration, and the enlargement for
two days of the salivary glands of the patient. I have seen no other
statements relating to the poisonous properties of this species, and the
results alluded to may have been owing to some individual idiosyncrasy.

Berkeley, in his "Outlines," gives the following description of this
mushroom: "Pileus fleshy, obsoletely umbonate, growing pale, variegated
with _saffron-red, adpressed, innate_ scales; stem stuffed, then hollow,
nearly equal, squamose, of the same color as the cap; gills
su