CHA P TER V. — COM PA RATI VE REVIEW. — GASTR OMYCE TES. 



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G. fimbriates, G. coliformis, and others its cells are delicate, and it becomes full of 

 fissures soon after the peridium has opened, and unable to assist in the bending 

 of the rays. In G. mammosus and, according to Tulasne, in G. rufescens on the 

 contrary it has the same persistent hygroscopic qualities as in G. hygrometricus. 



3. The differences between the genera Batarrea and Podaxon and the typical 

 Lycoperdaceae which have been hitherto under consideration are sufficiently striking to 

 require a special description. The early stages of the development are not known in 

 either of them. 



A half-ripe specimen of Batarrea Steveni from the south of Russia examined 

 by myself was in shape a cushion-like body (Fig 147 a) with a regularly convex 

 upper surface and a diameter of nearly seven centimetres. The vertical median 

 section shows a structure, which may be roughly compared with that of a nearly ripe 

 Geaster. An inner peridium shaped like the plano-convex blunt-edged pileus of an 

 Agaric with an average thickness of one centimetre incloses the almost ripe gleba, 

 which has a scleroderma-like structure, except that many of the stronger walls of 

 the chambers run vertically from the upper to the lower surface ; isolated capillitium- 

 threads occur amongst the spore-dust. The threads are short and obtusely fusiform 



FIG. 147. Batarrea Steveni, Fr. Vertical median longitudinal 

 sections, a a younger specimen but with most of its spores already 

 ripe. * a mature specimen (in the latter the apex only and base of the 

 stipe are depicted). / and h the outer, i the inner peridium, g the 

 gleba ; the lines in the gleba show the position of the stronger 

 remains of the trama. One third the natural size, semi-diagrammati- 

 cally represented. 



Fig. r48. Batarrea Steveni, Fr. 

 Isolated threads of the capillitiuni, 

 magn. 390 times. 



and irregularly curved, and show at their extremities or on their sides evident traces of 

 their former attachment ; the inner surface of their thin membrane, smooth on the 

 outer surface, has delicate brown spiral or annular thickenings, which Berkeley 1 

 was the first to describe (Fig. 148). The outer peridium is a stout membrane 

 about 1 mm. in thickness, which lies everywhere close upon the upper surface 

 of the inner peridium ; its lower portion is a massive cushion-like body more than 

 2 cm. thick in the middle. In later stages of the development an axile portion 

 of the basal cushion beneath the centre of the inner peridium developes ultimately 

 into an erect stipe which may be a foot in length and 1-1.5 cm. in thickness 

 with scales on its upper rough and fissured surface, and carries the inner peri- 

 dium up with it (Fig. 147 b). The apical portion of the outer peridium is torn 

 from the basal by the elongation of the stipe, and remains hanging in shreds 

 from the upper surface and margin of the inner peridium, while the basal portion 



1 Hooker's Journ. II, 1843. 



