Frederick Odell Conant of Portland, Maine, kept a handy and thorough record of some 46 species of mushrooms that they encountered in the summer of 1901, making sketches and taking notes as to the physical characteristics of the fungi. The first entry, marked “No. 1 July 12 + 21” includes five sketches of a particular mushroom, including a cross-section, and notes that it was found “On lawn about old apple tree stump” They go on to describe it at length: “Pileus white stem white gills purple brown when old much lighter when young or almost white—gills crowded + thin stem slender + hollow fibrous no ring veil or valve, spores dark from piles very thin.”

The care and love, the curiosity is evident on every page, with wonderful levels of detail and attention paid. Specimen No. 6 includes a cross section with a hollowed out tunnel reading “eaten by worms,” and No. 22 includes a note reading “Hygrophorus? No, don’t think so.” No. 28 focuses on the head of the phallus impudicus, the common stinkhorn, including two cross-sections with every aspect of the anatomy identified.