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Agaricus, the mushroom, a genus of the cryptogam pileus, class and order of fungi.—The generic character is a pileus, or cap with gills underneath: gills differing in substance from the rest of the plant, composed of two laminae: seeds in the gills. Authors have enumerated no less than 634 species of this fungus; the agaricus campestris or common mushroom is cultivated with great success and profit in the gardens about London. The spawn is found in old hot beds, or horse dung, where the animals have been fed on a pasture, in which case it is supposed that the invisible seed which is scattered from the gills of the mushrooms, is eaten with the grass by the cattle, and deposited unhurt in their excrement. There it vegetates and forms those white fibrous radicals producing tubercles like potatoes and which are called the spawn. The spawn may easily be known by the smell which resembles that of the mushroom, and which if planted in a bed of fresh hot dung, and kept moderately dry, will soon produce a crop.