CEYLON FIJNGT. ' 29 



only five centimetres in diameter ; and the stalk may be 

 central or lateral. But it is always readily identified by its 

 dark chestnut lacquered stalk, and slightly paler, lacquered, 

 concentrically sulcate, and radially puckered pileus. This 

 corresponds to Fomes lucidus of Europe, and it is evidently 

 what Fries refers to under that name when he says it is common 

 all over the Tropics, though it seems to differ from lucidus in 

 some respects, and is probably a parallel, rather than an 

 identical, species. Yet there is no Ceylon record of Fomes 

 lucidus, or anything approaching it. 



Thwaites arrived in Ceylon in 1849, and for some time did 

 very little in connection with his favourite cryptogams. He 

 appears to have sent small consignments to Berkeley from 

 time to time , a list of sixteen Ceylon species being published in 

 the Kew Gardens Miscellany. 1854, p. 229. while other Ceylon 

 records are scattered through Berkeley's fists. Dr. Harvey 

 who visited Ceylon in 1853 collected three species. But from 

 about 1865 to 1869 Thwaites appears to have put all the Gar- 

 dens' staff to collecting fungi, with the result that over 1,200 

 numbers were sent to Berkeley, accompanied by several 

 hundred accurate watercolour drawings. These were des- 

 cribed by Berkeley and Broome in the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society, Vol. 27. and in the Journal of the Linnean 

 Society, Vols. 11, 14, 15. These lists were evidently intended 

 to form a complete account of the fungi of Ceylon to that date, 

 but many of the earlier records, even of Thwaites' specimens, 

 have been omitted. The total number is 1,211. 



It has already been stated that Thwaites apparently did not 

 collect fifty per cent, of Gardner's species, but this is chiefly 

 due to Berkeley's failure to recognize what he had named 

 before. Even in cases where he suggests that a new species 

 may be identical with an eaiiier form, one only wonders, on 

 comparing the descriptions, where the resemblance is to be 

 found. For example, he suggests that Lepiota continua, 

 which Gardner collected but Thwaites did not, may be a 

 wartless form of Lepiota oncopoda which only Thwaites 



