THE PHALLOIDE^ OF CEYLON. 167 



example, fresh specimens have a stalk 1'2 cm. diam., head, 

 2 cm. diam. ; stalk, 2-7 cm., head, 31 cm. ; stalk, 2*2 cm., 

 head, 2-2 cm. ; stalk, 2*2 cm., head, 3 cm. ; stalk, TScm., head, 

 2*5 cm. In probably the most usual case, the head is wider 

 than the stalk, and forms a spherical or ovoid network at the 

 top. The number of meshes varies in my specimens from 

 60 to 80: according to Penzig, Klotzsch's specimens of S. 

 periphragmoides had 98 and 124 meshes, while his own recent 

 examples had 64 and 66. The meshes are pentagonal or 

 hexagonal, and from three to eight millimetres in diameter, 

 measuring from keel to keel of the bars : they are usually 

 very uniform in size, but in a few cases one mesh is double the 

 size of the others, owing to the suppression of a bar. In one 

 specimen photographed the lower meshes are large and the 

 upper ones small, with an almost complete circle of elongated 

 double meshes. This specimen is the most irregular I have 

 met with. Specimens with two distinct stalks, but a single 

 head, have been reported from South America. I have met 

 with this abnormality once in Ceylon. It is scarcely necessary 

 to point out that the fusion of the heads must tak^place within 

 the volva, and that there can, therefore, be no partition 

 between the eggs which form such twin specimens. I have had 

 an undeveloped " twin " egg, but the two eggs which composed 

 it were separated by a membraneous partition, and they 

 developed two distinct stalks and heads. Lloyd, in record- 

 ing a double specimen from Brazil, refei-s to Penzig's 

 photographed specimens of Dictyophora multicolor as a similar 

 instance, but these are really only two specimens placed side 

 by side. 



The ideal cross section of a bar has the shape of an isosceles 

 triangle with the apex directed outwards : but the actual 

 varies from this, and is more generalh" irregularly oval or 

 lozenge-shaped. The bar is always sharply keeled on the 

 outer edge, but it may be either flat or keeled on the inner sur- 

 face. Owing to the persistent folding of the walls of the bars 

 the sides are furrowed and the keel is wavy. The bars are 

 hollow and the cavities are continuous, being in some cases 

 continued also into those of the inner layer of the stalk. The 

 lowest meshes, whose lower edge is part of the stalk, have a 



