CHAPTER V. COMPARATIVE REVIEW. HYMENOMFCETES. 295 



pileus, until at length the entire membrane is attached only at the uppermost end of 

 the stipe and hangs down from it like a frill, being cone-shaped and broadening 

 downwards, and plaited in delicate folds corresponding to the former lines of contact 

 with the lamellae ; in this state it is known as the annulus superus, frill or armilla. 



It remains to remark that the volva slowly follows the growth of the pileus, 

 partly by increase in size of its cells, partly also during a certain period by a not very 

 copious formation of new cells. This growth continues longest in the inner layers 

 next the surface of the pileus, while the outer, which cease to grow earlier, are 

 consequently torn and rent in pieces. At length it ceases altogether, and when 

 the stipe begins to elongate greatly the volva tears all round where the margin 

 of the pileus and the bulbus meet and is split up over the top of the pileus into 

 the angular pieces which lie loose on the ripe pileus of Amanita muscaria, and look 

 like white warts. 



Amanita vaginata and some species of Volvaria appear, from the few data with 

 which we are acquainted, to have the same or very nearly the same development as 

 the forms just described, except that they form no armilla, the lamellae and the 

 margin of the pileus separating smoothly from the stipe at the time of upward 

 expansion, and that the volva is ruptured at the apex and hangs together at the base 

 of the elongated stipe as a sac opened by lobes. 



The following remarks are added to the above account by way of illustration. 



i. The account given above of the development of the species which are furnished 

 with a marginal veil is founded, wherever it departs from my former statements, chiefly 

 upon the facts discovered by Hartig and Brefeld. It so far differs from the interpretation 

 of these facts expressed by Brefeld, that it acknowledges the existence of only a marginal 

 veil in the Coprini, Coprinus stercorarius for example and C. lagopus, whereas Brefeld 

 thinks that these species have a volva like that of Amanita. This difference of 

 opinion arises from the fact not mentioned above, that the apex of the pileus in 

 these species is covered with hair-formations, with which the hyphae of the marginal 

 veil are so interwoven that the two together form a dense covering over the young 

 pileus, and also that in some species the veil itself and the surface of the young 

 stipe are overlaid by a similar covering of hairs. The hairs begin to be developed 

 in the earliest stage of the formation of the pileus; in etiolated specimens 1 on the 

 top of the primordium before or without the downward growth of the hyphae which 

 build up the margin of the pileus. They grow out from the pileus and multiply, that 

 is, the members of the cell-rows of which they are composed are developed in 

 progressive succession towards the future definitive surface of the pileus, and from 

 it new cells are added one after another to the hairs already formed, and new 

 hairs are inserted between the original ones. To this must be added in many 

 cases the resemblance in form between the hairs of the pileus, the constituents 

 of the veil, and the clothing of the stipe. All are in the young state cylindrical 

 hyphae; all may retain this form during their existence, as in Coprinus lagopus 2 ; 

 or the segments swell as they mature into round vesicles, and the hair assumes 

 the appearance of a rosary and the cells part from one another as they grow 

 old. A desquamating covering of hairs of this kind clothes pileus and veil and stipe, as 

 in C. ephemeroides and C. micaceus. The covering of hairs generally ceases to grow 

 before the upward expansion of the pileus and final elongation of the stipe, and 



1 Brefeld, Schimmelpilze, III, t. IV, Fig. 2. 



2 Ibid. t. VII. 



