HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



75 



is no longer any excuse for being ignorant of what 

 ought most to concern us. 



The volumes issued by the United States Geological 

 Survey, under Dr. Hayden, indicate as great industry 

 as their subject-matter does diligence in the field. 

 The Tenth Annual Report is just to hand, in a bulky 

 volume, well stored with maps, sections, and other 

 illustrations, of the geological and geographical survey 

 of Colorado and the adjacent territories. It is in 

 reality a report of the progress made by the survey in 

 the year 1876. In it we have laborious details of the 

 various strata and their physical condition, as well as 

 interesting generalisations. Among the geologists 

 who contribute to the "Reports," are Dr. C. A. 

 White, Professor Endlich, Dr. A. C. Peale, W. H. 

 Holme, A. D. Wilson, H. Gaunett, Professor Les- 

 quereux, A. S. Packard, Dr. Hoffmann, and others. 

 The archaeology of the area surveyed is detailed, as 

 well as the geography, geology, botany, zoology, &c. 

 The Birds of the Colorado Valley, by Dr. Elliot 

 Coues, is another bulky volume of this survey series, 

 detailing the scientific and popular information con- 

 cerning North American ornithology, by the naturalist 

 best fitted for the task. Will the English govern- 

 ment ever learn to be less niggardly and mean with 

 the works published by the members of our own 

 geological survey? At present, by the high price 

 demanded for the volumes, and the stint with which 

 they are issued to scientific journals for review, they 

 appear to be doing their best to withhold the scientific 

 information from that public who have already been 

 taxed to pay for it. 



ANOTHER FUNGUS RAMBLE IN EPPING 

 FOREST. 



By Dr. De Crespigny, Author of "A New London 

 Flora," &c. 



{Continued from page 6.] 



WE find no fungus in our collection referable to 

 the family of Hydnei : some of the stemless 

 and resupinate forms are common enough on dead 

 wood and fallen branches, but Hydnum repandum, an 

 edible species with the habit of an agaric, has to the 

 best of our knowledge not been reported as occurring 

 in Epping forest ; but, as we gathered a specimen in 

 Highgate wood a year or two ago, it may not im- 

 probably be met with also in the forest ; it will be 

 recognised by the close-set series of spinous processes 

 over which the hymenium is spread out. The pileus, 

 usuallyjrregular (as in the figure), is of a~pale ochre 

 colour. 



Of fungi belonging to the Auricularini we have 

 Stereum hirsutwn and purpureum, a Corticium, 

 and Thelephora laciniata. In this family there are 

 neither plates, tubes nor spinous processes : the 

 hymenium is spread over the smooth surface of the 

 hymenophorum, with which it is confluent. These 



fungi are waxy or gelatinous or mostly coriaceous 

 expansions growing upon decayed wood or attached 

 to dead sticks, stems, &c, many of them resupinate. 

 Stereum hirsutum is very common and very variable ; 

 when young the hymenium is of a tawny yellow 

 colour; the pileus coriaceous, reflexed, strigoso-hirsutc. 

 S. purpureum when fresh, has the hymenium of a 

 pale violet hue ; (on stumps of felled trees). All the 

 many recorded species of Stereum, Corticium and the 

 like, resemble each other ; they differ merely in colour 

 and substance, and are consequently difficult to 

 distinguish. 



Thelephora laciniata is a very singular-looking 

 fungus ; it grows upon sticks, heath stalks, and at the 

 roots of old trees ; also on leaves (or their stalks) ; it 

 is of a madder brown colour, with a lighter shaded or 

 greyish border when fresh gathered ; a fibroso- 

 squamose flat or foliaceous expansion without any 

 cuticle, the fibres projecting beyond the margin and 

 imparting that laciniated appearance to the plant to 

 which it owes its name ; the hymenium is inferior 

 flocculose and papillose : the spores, as we observed 

 them, were quaternate on sporophores. 



Of the club-shaped fungi, Clavariei, are specimens 

 of three species : C. cristata, C. vermiculata, and 

 C. fusiformis ; the former in damp shady parts of the 

 forest ; the second on a grassy common at Woodford ; 

 the last mentioned in open parts of the forest behind 

 Loughton, — it has fascicled or subfascicled clavi of a 

 yellow colour, and resembles C. fastigiata or C. in- , 

 cvqualis; maybe we have mistaken it for the latter species. 

 In this family the hymenium is scarcely distinct from 

 the hymenophorum, and covers the whole surface of 

 the plant from the base to the apex. 



In the second order of the spore-bearing fungi, the 

 Gasteromycetes, the hymenium consisting of closely 

 packed cells, is rolled up, in some cases, as it were 

 into a sac or ball called peridium, and not until the 

 rupture of this by decay or otherwise, are the cells 

 exposed and the spores liberated. Of the Trichogastres, 

 which contain the typical forms of the family, we have 

 examples in three kinds of puffballs : Lycoperdon 

 gemmatum, Scleroderma cepa and S. vcrrucosum. The 

 peridium of the former genus is membranous ; that 

 of the latter is hard and coriaceous : both genera 

 occasionally exhibit a warty character in the integu- 

 ments, L. gemmatum especially so (see fig. 68). "The 

 hymenium occupies the surface of innumerable sinuses, 

 folds and cavities, all closely compacted into a 

 crumblike mass, the stem being a continuation of the 

 barren cells " (Berkeley). In Scleroderma the hymen- 

 ium is traversed by veins, and the spores are larger 

 than they are in Lycoperdon. 



In the Phalloidera family, the hymenium is also 

 confined at first in a peridium which differs from that 

 of the preceding family in that there is an intermediate 

 gelatinous layer between its coats. The stipe in its 

 undeveloped condition has the large cells or cavities 

 of its parenchyma compressed ; but they are obvious 



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