224 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



in Britain. Almost simultaneously it was discovered 

 by Mr, R. Kippist, and by Dr. Bromfield, in the Isle 

 of Wight. The latter found it about the beginning 

 of October, in a damp and grassy hollow, just within 

 and at the bottom of the Pelham Woods by St. Law- 

 rence, where it grew in tolerable plenty over an area 

 of, perhaps, some seventy or eighty square yards or 

 more of sward. " My attention," he says, " was in- 

 voluntarily drawn to it by the excessively repulsive 

 odour of carrion that pervaded the air around the 

 spot, and which induced one to look about for the 

 Phallus, a species well known to emit a scent so 

 analogous to that of a dead animal as to attract, and 

 apparently deceive, the flies, and induce them to 

 deposit their ova on the slimy pileus. The specimens 

 of ClatJiriis I found were many of them as large as an 

 ordinary-sized orange, and presented the appearance 

 of a very coarse or open network, forming slightly 

 collapsed hollow spheres of a bright flesh-red, precisely 

 like raw meat, the vessels of which are still filled with 

 blood ; the texture externally cellular, and, I think, 

 laminated, emitting an odour which, unlike that of 

 Phallus, was equally offensive, whether near to, or 

 removed from the organ of smell." ^ 



In all this group of fungi, the fructifying surface, or 

 portion which bears the spores, becomes a tenacious, 

 slimy, blackish coating, of the consistence of treacle, 

 and in this the greatest intensity of the odour appears 

 to reside. When the common stinkhorn is mature, 

 this slime covers the pileus, and drips from its edge. 



» "Clathrus in Britain," by W. A. Bromfield, M.D., in Amtah 

 and Mag. Nat. Hist. (Dec. 1843), P- 451- 



