Shooting Times & Country

The first word in field to fork

Fair-faced the Bluette in perfection is.” Not Jedi Master Yoda speaking, but the spirited mycologist Mrs Thomas Hussey, writing in her 1847 Illustrations of British Mycology. Many years ago I spent a couple of days in the mycology library at Kew Gardens where one of the few surviving originals of her book is jealously kept, locked in a room with similar treasures. The book itself is fair-faced perfection; beautifully illustrated and possessed of a chatty and amiable style.

The author covers but a tiny proportion of British fungi, with

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