90 Rev. M. J. Berkeley on the Fructification of the 



racters assigned to the hymenium of Agarics ; but the great 

 body of authority in favour of the received notions prevented 

 my doing more than recording such isolated observations, 

 which indeed are accompanied in the text with other circum- 

 stances which are not always perfectly correct. The acquisi- 

 tion of a more powerful doublet than I before possessed de- 

 termined me to examine accurately the structure in Coprinus, 

 in Link's account of which I did not feel confidence ; and the 

 result was such as to lead to a more extended examination of 

 species of the genus Agaricus belonging to different tribes, 

 and those of other pileate genera. The clavate Hymenomy- 

 cetes were then reviewed, and the investigation has ended in 

 a conviction that, notwithstanding the vast body of authority 

 and evidence which existed on the point, the structure has 

 been almost uniformly mistaken since the publication of Link's 

 observations, and that in true pileate and clavate Fungi asci 

 do not exist, but that the reproductive bodies are naked, and 

 consequently are, properly speaking, neither sporules nor spo- 

 ridia, but spores, and that with very few exceptions they are 

 quaternate as in the Coprini. In proof of this position I will begin 

 by stating what I find to be the structure in Coprini, in which 

 it is most easy to form a correct estimate ; and then, in order, 

 give the result of my observations in other tribes of the genus 

 Agaricus, and as many genera as I have been able to examine 

 of pileate and clavate Fungi. 



It is perhaps right that I should state that, with the excep- 

 tion of the few similar facts published in the English Flora, 

 all my observations have been made subsequently to the pre- 

 sentation of Montagne's Memoir, though without a know- 

 ledge of its existence. 



The agaric first examined was a form of Ag. micaceus, dif- 

 fering from the ordinary state of that species in having the 

 pileus minutely pilose instead of being sprinkled with mealy 

 particles. As it grew in dense clusters consisting of indivi- 

 duals in every stage of growth, it afforded me a good oppor- 

 tunity of tracing the development of the hymenium. In very 

 young specimens it consisted of oblong, obtuse, transparent 

 cells, disposed side by side like the pile of velvet with their 

 tips all level. It was not possible with a magnifying power of 



