An History of Fungusses, growing about Halifax (Vols 1-2)

observed to make their appearance at their respective seasons in one and the same place. On the contrary, the Agaricus elephantinus grew abundantly in the Shroggs and several other woods about Halifax in October 1786; this present year, 1787, I have not found more than one or two plants of it.

In the year 1785, the Peziza cornucopoides came up abundantly in one place in the last-named wood, but has not since grown there.

In September 1777, the Helvella mitra grew plentifully in several woods, in hedges, under trees, and even in pastures and meadows in this neighborhood; and since then, in the space of ten years, though my researches have been regularly kept up, I have not met with more than three or four specimens of that rare plant.

These observations bring to my mind others of a like nature which I have formerly made on the fugacity of some insects. For instance, the Painted Lady Butterfly (Papilio cardui, of LINNAEUS) was so plentiful about Halifax in 1780 that scarce a field was without them; in fields where flowering plants grew, particularly the Scabiosa succisa and Trifolium pratense, it was easy, with a common bag net, to catch ten or fifteen specimens in the space of an hour or two. But since that time, or for ten years before, that insect has been very rarely or not at all seen in this part of Yorkshire. The like remarks hold good, in a lesser degree, in respect to the Papilio atalanta, Phalaena meticulosa, etc., and to some birds, namely the Lanius collurio, Loxia recurvirostra, Turdus torquatus, etc.

Some species of Fungi are perennial and abiding, as the Sphaeria tuberculosa; others, though they die and fall away annually, have an abiding or perennial root, as the Sphaeria hypoxylon.

The Phallus impudicus, a rare plant here, I have observed to grow three successive years in the same hand's-breadth of ground, though I took up the