462 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



parts of the fruit-bodies, the tops or tips of the ultimate branches, 

 and the upper surfaces in the angles of each fork are usually 

 sterile. In the Clavariae the discharge of the spores from the basidia is 

 accompanied by a drop excretion from the spore-hilum, as in other 

 Hymenomycetes . 



Sparassis has its hymenium restricted to the lower surfaces of its 

 laminae. In this it resembles Stereum, but it may have been evolved 

 from a Clavaria. 



Calocera resembles Clavaria in its form and in the small distance 

 to which its spores are shot from their sterigmata, but it differs from 

 Clavaria in being subgelatinous, in becoming horny on drying, in reviving 

 after desiccation, and in possessing long cylindrical bifurcated basidia. 



The galls formed by Exobasidium species upon their hosts are 

 advantageous to the parasites in extending the surfaces over which they 

 may spread their hymenium. 



Chapter VII. The Red Squirrel of North America not only feeds 

 on the seeds of fir-cones, hazel-nuts, etc., but is also an habitual 

 mycophagist. In the late autumn, it often collects fleshy fungi in large 

 numbers for its winter supply of food, and it stores these fungi some- 

 times en masse in holes in tree trunks, old birds' nests, etc., and some- 

 times on the branches of certain trees. The fruit- bodies hung out in 

 the branches of trees dry up and are thus preserved ; and squirrels 

 have been watched eating them during the winter. 



Chapter VIII. Slugs attack and feed upon most species of fleshy 

 Hymenomycetes occurring in woods, including Amanita muscaria and 

 -.4. phalloides which are poisonous to human beings, and Pluteus cervinus 

 the gills of which are provided with numerous cuspidate cystidia. The 

 attacks of slugs often interfere seriously with, and sometimes entirely 

 prevent, the production and liberation of spores by individual fruit- 

 bodies. Most species of fleshy fungi are in no way protected against 

 slugs. Very many species of fleshy fungi do not depend on slugs for 

 the dissemination or germination of their spores. 



Slugs find the fungi upon which they feed by their sense of smell. 

 (Jhemotactic experiments made upon Limax maximus with Phallus 

 impudicus, Boletus scaber, Russula nigricans, etc., in which the fruit- 

 bodies were set out on bare gravel, showed that this slug can find various 

 fruit-bodies at night by its sense of smell even when the fruit-bodies 

 are 20 feet distant. 



Chapter IX. In the Agaricineae there are two main types of 

 organisation for the production and liberation of spores : (1) the Aequi- 

 hymeniiferae or Non-Coprinus Type, and (2) the I naequi-Jiy menu ferae 

 < >r Coprinus Type ; and each Type includes several distinct Sub-types. 



In the Aequi-hymeniiferae : (1) usually the gills are relatively thick ; 

 (2) the gills are wedge-shaped in cross-section ; (3) the gills are positively 

 geotropic ; (4) the hymenium looks downwards to the earth ; (5) every 



