DECADES OF FUNGI. 71 
Common Melons, Luffa, Gourds, and Cucumbers. The fruit is picked 
when about two-thirds grown, the size and shape of a common field- 
turnep, two inches and a half high, and three inches and a half across. 
It is pared, cut in quarters, the seeds extracted, well boiled in water, 
and finally boiled in a little milk, with salt, black-pepper, and nutmeg. 
Mussulmans generally cut it into dice, and cook it together with meat 
in stews or curries. Hindoos fry it in ghee (clarified butter) with 
split gram-peas (Cicer arietinum), and a curry powder of black-pepper, 
cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms, dried cocoa-nut, turmeric, salt, and last 
(but not least in their opinion) the never-failing assafætida. It is 
sometimes made into a preserve in the usual manner. It is sometimes 
picked when small, cooked without scraping out the seeds, and re- 
garded a greater delicacy than when more advanced. 
In England it might be cultivated and cooked like the Vegetable 
Marrow (Cucumis ovifera), which it much resembles in its qualities, 
Kurrachee, Scinde, September 1st, 1850. 
Tas. III. Part of a stem :— natural size. Fig. 1. Stamens ; fig. 2, 
section of the male flower, showing the disc; fig. 3, ditto of female 
flower; fig. 4, seed ; fig. 5, section of ditto :—a/ more or less magni- 
fied; fig. 6, young fruit (downy); and 7, fully-formed fruit :—nat. size. 
Drecanes or Funei; dy the Rev. M. J. BERKELEY, M.A., F.L.S. 
Decade XXXIV. i 
Sikkim-Himalayan Fungi collected by Dr. Hooker. 
331. B. delphinus, Hook. fil.; pileo pulvinato glabro luride spadiceo ; 
stipite subæquali sublævi spadiceo sursum rubro apice flavo; poris 
subdecurrentibus sordide flavis; carne secta multicolore. Hook. fil., 
No. 76, cum ic. 
Has. On earthy, open places. Darjeeling, 7,500 feet. June. Rare. 
Inodorous. Pileus 2 inches or more across, pulvinate, smooth or very 
minutely tomentose, nearly dry, of a lurid reddish-brown. Stem about 
2 inches high, + an inch or more thick, often curved at the base, nearly 
equal, of the same colour as the pileus, but shaded above with red, and 
then with yellow, nearly even. Pores somewhat decurrent, dirty- - 
yellow. Flesh of pileus, when cut, instantly changing to blue, espe- - 
