306 THAXTER. 



line and impenetrable by stains, the contents losing its granular char- 

 acter entirely. The spore-envelope is thin and not clearly differ- 

 entiated. The scaly or flecked appearance of the surface of the 

 sporocarp is due to patches of loose hyphae which project from the 

 peridium, and in section appear as flat tufts. 



Endogone lactiflua Berkeley (1846). 

 (Fig. 20.) 



Berkeley (1846), p. 81. Tulasne (1862), p. 183. Bucholtz (1912), p. 155, 



figs. 1-61. 

 Endogone lanata Harkness (1899), p. 280. 



This species has become for the first time thoroughly well known 

 through the researches of Bucholtz, who was not only the first to see 

 and to describe the sexual origin of its spores, but to figure clearly the 

 remarkable envelope which surrounds them at maturity, formed from 

 labyrinthine filaments which eventually become thickened and modi- 

 fied to form what he has called a "flammenkrone," which is firmly 

 adherent to the exospore. Both the envelope and the flammenkrone, 

 however, vary, as is mentioned by Bucholtz, (1912), p. 165, in different 

 individuals, apparently according to the age of the spore-mass, and in 

 some of the Hesse specimens in the Farlow Herbarium neither are 

 striking or easily recognized; while in others they are apparent at a 

 glance. The same is true of material which the wTiter has collected 

 at various times and in various localities in New England; at South 

 Billerica, Mass.; at Kittery Point, Maine, where seven different 

 gatherings were made; and at Intervale, New Hampshire. In all 

 these gatherings, which were mostly of single specimens, the gross size 

 is smaller and the spores themselves larger than in the Hesse speci- 

 mens; and while in some the labyrinthine envelope-filaments (Buc- 

 holtz, fig. 50), though finer, are quite as distinct and the fiammen- 

 krone clearly distinguished, in a majority of cases these structures are 

 not clearly visible, except that a well developed hyphal sheath is 

 always present. Entirely similar conditions are, however, seen in 

 some of the Hesse specimens, so that it seems probable that their 

 distinctness may be a matter of age or some of the circumstances 

 associated with their growth. Although in the Hesse material the 

 spores are usually only 100 /x in diameter, while in the American they 



