230 M. C. Montagne^s (Jrganographic and Physiologic 



My friend Richard liangtry, Esq., when grouse-shooting at Aber- 

 arder, in Inverness- shire, in the season of 1840, met with a kingfisher 

 several times, from the middle to the end of September, about a wild 

 mountain-rivulet at a considerable elevation, and whose banks were 

 destitute of wood or any cover. In the middle of August I once 

 saw three of these birds in company at the Pontine marshes between 

 Rome and Naples. 



Mr. Waterton, in his ' Essays on Natural History,' treats of the 

 kingfisher in a most pleasing manner. 



[To be continued.] 



XXVIII. — Organographic and Physiologic Sketch of the Class 

 Fungi, by C. Montagne, D.M. Extracted from ' Histoire 

 physique, politique et naturelle de File de Cuba,^ par M. Ra- 

 mon DE LA Sagra, and translated and illustrated with 

 short notes by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S. 



[Continued from p. 116.] 



Py r enemy cetes, Fries. 



This family is one of the largest in the class Fungi. Its essential 

 characters are, 1st, a mucilaginous, deliquescent, rounded, never 

 disciform nucleus, containing little convergent utricles (asci) mixed 

 with continuous or septate threads (paraphyses), and containing 

 sporidia ; 2ndly, receptacles, either real (perithecia) or formed by 

 the matrix or stroma, destined to contain the nucleus. These fungi 

 are to the Dis corny cetes, what Verrucarice are to Lecidinea amongst 

 Lichens. 



It would be difficult to conceive the prodigious variety of forms 

 which the perithecium and sporidia assume in the descending series 

 of genera and species in this family from the genus Hypoxylon to Sa- 

 cidium. 



I regret that I have not space to consider these as fully as in the 

 foregoing families. I must confine myself to what is indispensable 

 to give a general notion of the group. 



The family of Pyrenomy cetes is divided naturally into two prin- 

 cipal tribes (Fr. Fl. Scan., p. 345): 1. Sphceriacet^ characterized by 

 the presence of asci ; 2. Perisporiacea by the absence of true utricles, 

 which are, however, sometimes represented by little transparent 

 sacs. We will examine in succession the stroma, perithecium, spo- 

 ridia, &c. 



The perithecia, simple, scattered or aggregate, are sometimes con- 

 nected by a byssoid web or by a carbon-like substance, which is 

 called stroma. This when present is extremely variable in form ; it 

 is vertical and centripetal, or horizontal and centrifugal. The ver- 

 tical stroma (caulescens) is orange or black, carbonaceous, corky, 

 fleshy or woody, coriaceous, flexible or brittle, smooth or pubescent, 

 even and polished, or else rough and warty, generally cylindrical, 

 branched and dichotomous or simple, and then inflated with a capi- 

 tate or clavate apex. In this last case it is called stipitate, and the 



