306 FUNGI. 



tips. The seed is borne packed in tiers within the 

 branches. 



The Hypoxilon group has a few members well worthy 

 of a passing notice. Large swollen blisters, hard, and 

 brick red, growing on bark, presents the shapeless 

 Hypoxilon (H. multiforme, fig. 13). Raised knobs, like 

 the heads of rusty nails, studding hazel branches, are 

 plants of the brown Hypoxilon (H. fusca) ; and carmine 

 spots on the bark of beech shew clusters of red Hypoxilon 

 (H. coccineum). Numberless stains and dots of every 

 shade of brown, some thick, some hardly raised, some 

 only discernible at all by means of a lens, mark a portion 

 of the members of the Sphaeria group. 



Next to the Sphaeria group comes that of Perisporiacei, 

 interesting; as containing the race of Mildews, so torment- 

 ing to the farmer and nursery gardener. The fruit-tree 

 mildew is trying enough, the rose mildew is an unwhole- 

 some guest, but all vexatious parasites melt into nothing- 

 ness before the bete noir of Hop-growers, all whose sum- 

 mer days pass in terror, lest the caterpillar eat, or the 

 mildew choke their golden hopes centered in their beauti- 

 ful hop vines. 



The last group in the Ascus class is that of Onygei, 

 and one of its curious members graces our collection. 



Once more memory returns to a Yorkshire wood. It 

 is not the season when poets rave about nature's loveli- 

 ness. The spurge laurel on the clink bank is green, but 

 its scented flowers are gone, the autumn flowers lie 

 crushed and saturated with winter rain, and the river 

 roars turbulently below, missing the sunshine which 

 should gild its waves. Here is a steep footpath, but 



