Another structural feature of the Amanita is shown in the illustration, but has been omitted from the above consideration to avoid confusion. This is the "veil" which, in the young mushroom, originally connected the edge of the cap, or pileus, with the stem, and whose gradual rupture necessarily follows the expansion of the cap, until a mere frill or ring is left about the stem at the original point of contact.
But this feature is a frequent character in many edible mushrooms, as witness the several examples in the edible species of our plates, and therefore of no dangerous significance per se, being merely a membrane which protects the growing gills.
Plate III.—DEVELOPMENT OF AMANITA VERNUS
Scales and scurfy spots
Nor are the other features, the remnants of the volva on the summit of the cap, to be considered of primary importance from the popular point of view, for the reason—firstly, that these fragments, while conspicuous and constant in Amanita muscarius ([Plate 4]), are not thus permanent in several other species of Amanitæ, notably the white-satin-capped Amanita vernus, Amanita phalloides, and Amanita Cæsarea, in which the fragments are deciduous; and, secondly, because the same general effect of these warty scales is so clearly imitated in other mushrooms which are distinctly edible, as in examples [Plate 10] and [Plate 16]. It is to the volva or cup, then, that we must devote our special attention as the only safe and constant character. And this leads me to the prominent and necessary consideration of another common species of Amanita, mentioned above, in which even this cup is more or less obscure.
THE POISONOUS FLY-MUSHROOM
Agaricus (Amanita) muscarius