S The Irish Naturalist. [ Jan. 



up to over-ripe specimens of Z. gigaiiteicm, larger than one's 

 head, and by this time fluffy, brown and dusty — very different 

 to the creamy delicious specimens which some of us hoary- 

 headed original members can still call to mind as they lay 

 during a Club tea at the International Hotel in Bray. That 

 was in 1886. I believe some enthusiastic mycophagist wanted 

 to eat some then and there, and if m}^ recollection serves me 

 aright, our whilom Secretary, Mr. Pim, did actually remove 

 the said specimens for the expressed purpose of feeding 

 thereon. I have since repeated his experiment —on specimens 

 found near Glensouthwell, and which were so big that my 

 carrying them home on a Sunday afternoon excited comment 

 — with most satisfactory results. The recipe for cooking them, 

 however, I am under an honourable obligation to keep secret. 

 Next we come to the Rusts and their allies (Uredinei) which 

 grow parasitically on flowering plants. These are anything 

 but well represented, and with them we need not stay long, 

 pausing, however, an instant to glance at the curious 

 Tuberculi7ia^ a parasite of a parasite. It covers the Coltsfoot- 

 Cluster-cup with its brownish-violet spore-beds. The Cluster- 

 cup fungus is a parasite on the Coltsfoot, and the Tuberculina 

 is a parasite on the Cluster-cup. At Brackenstown, however, 

 we found it, not on the Cluster-cup, which had long since dis- 

 appeared, but on its relative and successor the Coleosporium— 

 a fact which deserves to be noted. Synchytriimi taraxaci, next 

 on the list, is also a parasite. It forms orange-red crusts on 

 leaves of Dandelion, and is as far below those just named in 

 point of structure as they are below the Agarics. The 

 mysterious group Chytridieae, to which it belongs, have not 

 even got the length of forming a mycelium, and if we exclude 

 the Myxomycetes and Bacteria, stand at the very bottom of 

 known Fungi, whilst their strange sporangia and tiny, active, 

 flagellate swarm- spores possess a deep interest for the 

 microscopist, whose command of high powers permits him to 

 trace the developmental cycle of these intra-cellular para- 

 sites. Four years ago, on Dalkey Hill, I found the first 

 recorded Irish specimen of S. taraxaci, and to-day the species 

 still remains the only one on our Irish list. Will any sharp- 

 sighted reader find me the one on the Scabious ? or the species 

 that inhabit Perennial Mercury, or Self-heal, or Chickweed ? 



