THE SOUND MADE BY FUNGUS GUNS 



333 



body puffed vigorously, the puffing continuing for about 2 seconds. 

 During this time I felt my ear being sprayed with the contents of 

 many thousands of asci, and I distinctly heard a loud hissing sound. 

 Then the fruit-body became quite silent. 



Aleuria vesiculosa (Fig. 167), which in the first volume of these 

 Researches I incorrectly called Peziza repanda, puffs audibly like 

 A. repanda and Pustularia catinus. SomxC horse-dung balls obtained 

 from the streets of Winnipeg in a frozen condition were kept moist 



Fig. 1G7. — Aleuria vesiculosa ( = Peziza repanda of Vol. I), a Discomycete 

 that puffs audibly. The fruit-bodies came up spontaneously on horse 

 dung kept in a largo glass case in the laboratory at Winnipeg. They 

 puffed only whe;i fully expanded. Natural size. 



in a large glass damp-chamber in the laboratory. The mycelium of 

 Aleuria vesiculosa grew spontaneously in the dung-balls and, after 

 about a month, gave rise to several beautiful clusters of fruit-bodies. ^ 

 These were at first globose and closed, but they soon expanded, 

 the extreme margins of the cups remaining more or less incurved. 

 The discs were pallid-brown and the external surface furfuraceous, 

 i.e. coarsely granular or warted. The discharge of the spores did 

 not begin until the fruit-bodies had become more or less flattened 

 out. I placed one of the flattened fruit-bodies in a small glass box. 

 Next day I removed the lid of the box and at once put the fungus 



1 The clusters resembled the one in the photograph reproduced as Fig. 432, 

 p. 508, in M. E. Hard's The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise, Ohio, U.S.A., 1908. 



