442 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



nutriment from Polyporus perennis fruit- bodies or merely uses the 

 Polyporus fruit-bodies as an apparatus to which it may attach its 

 own fruit-bodies. An experimental investigation alone can decide 

 between these two alternatives ; but, basing my opinion on our 

 knowledge of actual parasitism in the case of Stropharia epimyces 

 on Coprinus comatus and C. atramentarius, of Boletus 'parasiticus on 

 Scleroderma vulgare and S. verrucosum, and of Nyctalis asterophora 

 and N. parasitica on certain Russulae, I am inclined to the first 

 alternative, namely, that Claudopus subdepluens, when found on 

 Polyporus perennis, is truly parasitic and depends on the Polyporus 

 for its food-supply. It is of course possible that C. subdepluens 

 normally lives a saprophytic existence on wood, etc., and is only 

 occasionally a parasite on Polyporus perennis. 



Volvaria Loveiana. — Volvaria Loveiana is a rare pink-spored 

 volvate agaric which is occasionally found parasitic on the large and 

 substantial fruit- bodies of Clitocybe iiebularis, and sometimes also 

 on C. clavipes} It occurs in England, France, Germany, Canada 

 (Ontario), and the United States of North America (Minnesota).^ 



The first record of Volvaria Loveiana is in Knapp's Journal of a 

 Naturalist ^ where, in a wood-cut, two specimens are shown, each 

 seated on the top of a Clitocybe nebularis. Knapp called the fungus 

 Agaricus surrectus and remarks : " We have seen an agaric with a 

 bulbous root and downy pileus that will spring from the smooth 

 summit of another which has a uniform foot-stalk, though not of 

 common occurrence. Thus a plant that arises from decay is found 

 to constitute a soil for another, and the termination of the chain 

 of efficiency is hidden from us." 



Volvaria Loveiana. was first carefully described by Berkeley * 



^ This second host is mentioned by Eene Maire {vide infra, " Notes critiques, 

 etc.," p. 422) and by A. Ricken (Die BldUerpilze, Leipzig, 1915, p. 275). 



2 E. T. Harper, " Two Parasitic Mushrooms," Mycologia, vol. viii, 1916, p. 65. 

 Dearness collected specimens at London, Ontario, in 1896. Ibid., p. 68. 



^ J. L. Knapp, The Journal of a Naturalist, London, ed. ii, 1829, pp. 377-379. 



* M. J. Berkeley, in W. J. Hooker's English Flora, vol. v, part ii, London, 1836, 

 pp. 104-105. Berkeley was evidently not aware that the fungus had been recorded 

 by Knapp, for he refers to it as " a most elegant and curious species which . . . 

 appears not to have been hitherto noticed." The illustration shown in Fig. 186, 

 taken from Berkeley's Outlines of Fungology, London, 1860, Plate VII, Fig. 2, has 

 been enlarged to natural size. 



