38 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



they neither elongated their stipes nor expanded their pilei. Thus 

 the attempt to cultivate C. plicatilis on horse dung failed. Under 

 similar conditions of culture C. lagopus and G. sterquilinus — both 

 of which occur on horse dung in pastures — never fail to fruit well, 

 the former in about 14 days and the latter in about 28 days after 

 inoculation of the dung with spores. The failure of C. plicatilis 

 to flourish in artificial dung-cultures helps to explain why this 

 species is never found on horse dung under natural conditions in 

 the open. Possibly it might be grown successfully on sterilised 

 grass-plants. 



The Fruit-bodies. — Some fruit-bodies in various stages of 

 development obtained from an old lawn at Birmingham, England, 

 are shown in Fig. 22. They were photographed immediately after 

 being removed from the lawn and therefore exhibit their natural 

 forms. The two fruit-bodies shown in Fig. 21 (p. 35) were coming 

 up amid grass near London, England. Two other fruit-bodies, 

 shown in Vol. Ill, Fig. 56 (p. 138), were photographed as they grew 

 beneath seme trees in Queen's Cottage Grounds, Kew Gardens. 



A Synonym : Coprinus hemerobius. — In Coprinus plicatilis the 

 expanded pileus is r3-2-5 cm. in diameter and the stipe 3-9 cm. 

 high ; but exceptional fruit-bodies with the pileus 4 cm. in diameter 

 and the stipe 6-9 cm. high are sometimes found. These exceptional 

 fruit-bodies, with pilei of about twice the ordinary size, may seem, 

 at first sight, to belong to another species ; and I am inclined to 

 believe that Coprinus hemerobiiis is nothing more than a large 

 C. plicatilis. 



Once at Kew, in the grounds of Queen's Cottage, I found some 

 exceptionally large expanding fruit-bodies of C. plicatilis which at 

 first I took to belong to C. hemerobius (Fig. 23) ; but a careful 

 examination showed that they agreed with ordinary C. plicatilis 

 fruit-bodies in : the characters of the stipe (A), the large date- 

 brown disc (A, a and 6), the nature of the grooves in the pileus- flesh 

 (A, 6), the palisade cells of the flesh (B, a), the trimorphism of the 

 basidia, the nature and distribution of the cystidia (B, 6 and c), 

 the blackness and large size of the spores (B, /), and in the spores 

 having three differing dimensions (B, d and e). Both the spores 

 and the cystidia (B, c-/), like the unexpanded pileus (A, b), were 



