3*8 



DIVISION II. COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 



surrounds the lower extremity of the stipe like the volva of Amanita. Ultimately 

 the wall of the inner peridium parts by a circular fissure beneath the margin, the 

 upper piece falls away from the lower, which remains connected with the stipe, and 

 from the gleba, and the spores are dispersed as dust. The tissue of Batarrea Steveni 

 is entirely formed of stout hyphae with interstices which usually contain air ; the 

 hyphae in the wall of the hollow stipe are vertical and parallel to one another, as is 

 the rule in most of the Hymenomycetes. There is no gelatinous tissue. In specimens 

 with the outer peridium still closed the stipe is indicated only by the denser structure 

 and darker colour of the tissue of the basal portion at the 

 spot where the stipe subsequently originates. 



Queletia 1 of Fries seems to approach nearest to Batarrea, 

 and perhaps also to Tulostoma. 



Podaxon has long-stalked ovoid or elongated peridia 

 more than an inch in thickness, with a lateral wall of the 

 thickness of a stout sheet of paper, which ultimately opens 

 by lobes or scales and has the stout fibrillose structure of 

 the stipe. The same structure is seen in the central column 

 which traverses the peridium to the apex as a prolongation 

 of the stipe. The space between the column and the wall 

 is filled in the ripe compound sporophore with a connected 

 capillitium, formed of long spiral tubes with a transverse wall 

 only here and there. These tubes shoot out in numbers 

 from the parallel peripheral hyphae of the central column, 

 and run in the young plant into the outer wall of the peri- 

 dium, which is torn away from them when the plant is 

 matured. They are but little branched, and are rarely 

 found with blind ends and these always on one side only. 

 They are held firmly together and form a net-work after 

 maturity, being interlaced and wound round one another 

 in every direction. They have rather thin yellow walls in 

 Podaxon pistillaris and flatten into ribbons in the mature 

 and dry condition. Some of them behave in the same way 

 in P. carcinomatis, but others have thick yellowish brown 

 membranes, which often have fine spiral striations and 

 readily tear into spiral bands in the line of the striae, as 

 Berkeley 2 has recorded. See Fig. 149. The spaces between 

 the capillitium-threads are filled with spores and the dried 

 remains of the membranes of the basidia, which have become 

 more or less of a brown colour and partly adhere to the 

 threads. Specimens of Podaxon pistillaris or an allied species, 

 which were younger but had reached their full size 3 , showed the cavity of the peridium 

 filled with a gleba containing an extremely large number of narrow and very sinuous 

 chambers, very thin trama-plates, and a dense hymenial layer consisting entirely 

 of stout four-spored basidia. The capillitium-threads were already discernible as broad 

 but thin-walled hyphae passing on one side into the wall of the peridium, on the other 

 into the columella, and in the gleba running, as in Lycoperdon, partly in the trama-plates, 

 partly transversely through the chambers. If a statement of Corda 4 may be applied 

 to this plant, the early development of the stalked peridium described above takes 

 place inside a peridium externum which is subsequently broken through, just as in 



FIG. 149. Podaxon carcinomatis, 

 Fr. Piece of a tube of the capillitium. 

 from a specimen in the herbarium of 

 the University of Leipzig. Magn. 390 

 times. 



1 K. Vet. Acad. Forhandl. &c. Stockholm, 1871, No. a. 



2 Hooker's Journ. IV, p. 292. 



3 In the Herbarium at Berlin, marked Schweinfurth, Iter 2, No. 275. 



4 See Icon. VI, t. Ill, f. 44, and the text belonging to it. 



