TAXONOMY OF THE PILOBOLIDAE 



193 



gave to the plant a name which showed a recognition of its true 

 affinities. He called it Mucor obliquus, from the oblique manner in 

 which the stipe frequently sprang from the side of the basal reservoir, 

 but his description, though very interesting, is insufficient to enable 

 us to identify the species. 



Withering, in his Botanical Arrangement (1776), quoted Petiver's 

 plant from Ray's Synopsis and bestowed upon it the name Mvcor 

 roridulus. 



In Wiggers' Primitiae Florae Holsaticae (1780) Scopoli's plant 

 was placed in a new genus, under the name 

 Hydrogera crystallina suggested by his tutor 

 Weber. 



But the first good description of the 

 genus was given by Tode, who imposed 

 upon his species the name of Pilobolus 

 crystallinus by which it is now known. The 

 generic name is a translation of the title 

 " Hutwerfer," which he used in the Schrifte 

 der Berlinsche Gesellschaft naturforschenden 

 Freunde (1784) ; his account was repeated in 

 his Fungi Mecklenburgenses selecti in 1790. 



Species of Pilobolus were then mentioned 

 successively : by Dickson (1785), who figured 

 one under the name Mucor urceolatus ; by 

 Bulhard, under the same name, in his Herbier 

 de la France (1784), with a figure added in 

 1789 ; by Bolton (1789), who, besides figuring under that name a 

 form resembhng a badly grown Pilobolus Kleinii, added another 

 supposed to be identical with Petiver's as Mucor roridus (Fig. 98) ; 

 andby Vahl, in the Flora Danica (1792), who figured one as Pilobolus 

 crystallinus. 



Persoon gives an excellent description of P. crystallirius in his 

 Observationes Mycologicae (1796), accompanied by an imperfect 

 figure ; and in his Synopsis methodica Fungorum (1801) he mentions 

 both that and P. roridus, but considers the latter as doubtfully distinct. 



Sowerby, in his EngHsh Fungi (1803), gives a figure of Mucor 

 urceolatus which seems to represent P. crystalli7ius . 



Fig. 98. — Pilobolus roridus 

 (Bolton) Pers. A 

 cluster of fruit-bodies 

 on horse dung, about 

 natural size, and two 

 fruit-bodies much en- 

 larged. Reproduced 

 by photography from 

 Bolton's History of 

 Fungusses (1789). 



VOL. VI. 



