8 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



942), I have never seen. My specimens resemble more or less 

 Cooke's left top figure in his Plate 5. His fruit-bodies do not appear 

 to be fully expanded ; but, for young fruit-bodies, they are too 

 brown at the disc. According to my experience, the discs of young 

 fruit-bodies are deeper yellow than the rest of the pileus, owing to 

 the sulphur-yellow of the scales there ; and they become brown 

 only when the fruit-body is dying. 



According to Petch, who has found Lepiota cepaestipes growing 

 in the open in Ceylon, the middle and lower figures in Cooke's Illus- 

 trations, Plate 1179, are ascribed by Cooke to Lepiota licmophora 

 erroneously, and really represent L. cepaestipes. The other figures 

 in the same Plate, according to the same critic, are badly copied 

 drawings of L. licmophora with the original colours altered.^ The 

 middle and lower figures of Plate 1179 resemble my specimens of 

 Lepiota cepaestipes in both colour and general form, although their 

 stipes are longer and less swollen below. 



The Spore-discharge Period. — In order to make some precise 

 observations on the length of the spore-discharge period of Lepiota 

 cepaestipes, I proceeded in the following way. One afternoon, three 

 fruit-bodies were coming up in the greenhouse and, toward evening, 

 their pilei were beginning to expand. At 6.30 p.m. one of the 

 fruit-bodies, together with a little of the substratum containing 

 the mycelium, was dug up and then planted very carefully in its 

 original upright position in a cup containing wet peat ; whereupon 

 the cup was taken into a house and set in a saucer containing water. 

 Next, for the purpose of catching any falling spores, a glass slide 

 was placed on a support resting on the cup, so that there was a 

 clean glass surface just beneath the gills (but not touching them) on 

 one side of the pileus. The whole was then covered with a large 

 bell-jar. 



At 7.15 P.M. the slide was removed and examined with the 

 microscope. No spores had settled upon it : this indicated that 

 the spore-discharge period had not yet begun. The slide was put 

 back under the pileus. At 7.50 p.m. it was re-examined and a few 

 spores were found upon it. We may suppose, therefore, that spore- 

 discharge had begun about 7.45 p.m. A second slide was placed 



1 T. Fetch, loc. cit., p. 346. 



