258 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



Note on Phallus togatus, Kalclll),— Probably most of the students of 

 fungi of the United States were surprised at seeing, in the May number of the 

 Gazette, a new name attached to the excellent plate of the Phallus, from Penn- 

 sylvania, collected by Mr. Ran. The species is certainly one long known to 

 mycologists, although they have not been unanimous in deciding upon the name 

 to be given it. The fungus is not rare near Boston, and I have seen it living 

 on several occasions, once almost under the window of the dining-room of my 

 boarding house in Cambridge. I have collected it in the so-called "egg" stage, 

 that is, before the rupture of the peridium, and have watched its growth until 

 the veil was fully expanded. The species has been referred by some writers to 

 P. indusiatus, Vent., by others to P. Dwrnonum, Runiph., and by others still to P. 

 duplicatus, Bosc. The determination of the earlier described species of Phallus is 

 notoriously difficult, because one has to trust almost entirely to figures which 

 were drawn from poor and frequently pressed material, and, in several cases, it 

 is more than probable that what was wanting in the material examined was 

 supplied by the imagination of the artist. 



The species figured in the Gazette certainly does not correspond to Ven- 

 tenat's plate of P. indusiatus in the Mem. de V Inst. Vol. I, PI. VII., where the 

 veil reaches almost to the ground, is cylindrical and not campanulate in shape, 

 and has much larger perforations. Nor does it seem to me that the species in 

 question is the same as the form figured in the Diet. d'Hist. Nat. PL VII, fig. 1, 

 as P. indusiatus, and later referred by Schlechtendal to his P. tunicatus. I think 

 that the species is more properly P. duplicatus, Bosc, found by him in South Caro- 

 lina, and described and figured in his " Memoire sur quelques especes de Cham- 

 pignons des parties meridionales de VAmerique septentrionale " in the memoirs of the 

 Gesellschapt Naturfaesch Freunde, Vol. V., p. 86, PI. VI, f. 7, published at Berlin in 

 1811. The plate of Bosc, although far from satisfactory, represents our plant in 

 its essential features. The figure is larger than our plant, although I have seen 

 specimens nearly as large, but the relative position and appearance of the pileus 

 and veil are the same as in our species as usually seen. The figure given in the 

 Gazette shows the veil fully expanded, and I have watched the fungus and 

 seen it pass through all the stages from that figured by Bosc to that shown in 

 the Gazette. The structure of the fully expanded veil in this species is crib- 

 rose rather than clathrate, and although it eventually becomes slightly cam- 

 panulate and is a third as long as the stipe, or even somewhat longer, one usually 

 finds the veil more or less wrinkled around the stipe. In short, I see no reason 

 why we should not consider that the Phallus togatus of Kalchbrenner is the P. 

 duplicatus of Bosc, as it corresponds more closely to that species, both in anatom- 

 ical character and in its habitat than to any other, and, to state the case con- 

 versely, if this is not the species of Bosc, mycologists will find it next to im- 

 possible to tell what his P. duplicatus is. 



If we accept this determination as correct, as far as it goes, the question 

 remains whether P. duplicatus, Bosc, can not be merged in some previously de- 



