4 MICROSCOPIC FUNGI. 



phenomenon more closely, and the poetry about 

 the pixies all vanishes ; for the orange powder will 

 be seen to have issued from the plant itself. A 

 pocket lens, or a Coddington, reveals the secret of 

 the mysterious dust. Hundreds of small orifices 

 like little yellow cups, with a fringe of white teeth 

 around their margins, will be seen thickly scattered 

 over the under-surface of the leaves. These cups 

 (called peridia) will appear to have burst through 

 the epidermis of the leaf and elevated themselves 

 above its surface, with the lower portion attached 

 to the substratum beneath. In the interior of 

 these cup-like excrescences, or peridia, a quantity 

 of the orange-coloured spherical dust remains, 

 whilst much of it has been shed and dispersed over 

 the unoccupied portions of the leaves, the stems, 

 and probably on the leaves of the grass or other 

 plants growing in its immediate vicinity. These 

 little cups are fungi, the yellow dust the spores,* 

 or ultimate representatives of seed, and the epi- 

 phytal plants we have here found we will accept 

 as the type of the group or order to which we 

 wish to direct attention (plate I. figs. 1 — 3). 



Amongst the six families into which fungi are 

 divided, is one in which the spores are the prin- 

 cipal feature, as is the aurantiaceous dust in the 

 parasite of the goatsbeard. This family is named 



* Protospores they should be called, because, in fact, they 

 germinate, and on the threads thus produced the true snores- 

 or fruit, are borne. 



