106 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



James Dickson, who requested him to watch the spot and 

 endeavom- to detect the plant in its earliest appearance. Wood- 

 ward, together with his neighbom% " Mr. Stone, a most diligent and 

 skilful botanist, who first restored the Lycoperdon colifonne," 

 examined the spot carefully, and about the middle of August 

 found the plant just arisen — " but though we have daily visited 

 the spot since, we have never been able to find it again in so 

 young a state ; for so rapid appears to be its growth, that we 

 have found plants of two or three inches height above the 

 ground, the stems of which had lost part of their mucilage, where 

 the day before none had been visible." Woodward queries 

 whether the fungus is not a new genus. " This plant agrees with 

 the genus Phallus in its volva, which has a double coat replete 

 with mucilage ; and its stipes crowned with a reflexed pileus. 

 But it more nearly approaches the genus Ly coper don, by its head 

 covered with a thick dust, contained in a substance of a spongy 

 appearance, and by the form of the dust, which agrees perfectly 

 with that of most of the true lycoperdons, when examined in 

 the microscope. To this genus it must at present probably be 

 referred, though the total want of an exterior coat prevents its 

 agreeing with it so perfectly as it ought." Later accounts of the 

 fungus do not give so much prominence to the presence of 

 mucilage even if they mention it. 



Dickson (Plant. Crypt. Brit. Fasc. i, p. 24 (1785)) gives the 

 name Lycoperdon Phalloides to the plant. J. E. Smith [Spicile- 

 gium Botanicum, 1792, p. llj redescribes it apparently from Wood- 

 ward's specimens, and gives a coloured plate by J. Sowerby. 

 An almost identical figure is given in Sowerby's English Fungi, 

 t. 390, in the letterpress to which w^e are told that " Mr. Davey, 

 of the Grove, Yoxford, finds it annually in Suffolk." Persoon in 

 1801 {Syno'psis, p. 129) proposed a new genus Batarrea''- for the 

 reception of the fungus. M. J. Berkeley in Smith's English 

 Flora, V, p. 299 (1836) gives the habitat as "on sand hills " 

 and an additional record : — Stoke, Norfolk, W. J. Hooker. 



The next record of the fungus in this country is in a paper by 

 H. H. Higgins (Proc. Lit. Phil. Soc. Liverpool xiii, p. 131 (1859)) 

 — " in bare sand on the broken bank of a hedge, near the top of 

 the hill, Claremont, New Brighton, November 12th, 1857." In 

 1872 W. G. Smith exhibited four specimens at the Linnean Society 

 meeting : these had been found at Nork, near Epsom (see Journ. 

 Bot. xi, p. 121 (1873)). There is a specimen in the Kew 

 Herbarium from C. H. Spencer Perceval, of the same locality 

 and date, and a drawing by Mrs. Kussell in the plate collection of 

 the Natural History Museum — " in hollow ash, Nork, near 

 Epsom, December 1872. C. H. Sp. Perceval." This appears to 

 be the last record until Miss Noel's Gloucestershire find. 



In the plate collection at the National Herbarium there is also 

 a very poor drawing of Battarrea but without date or locality, and 



* " Meniorabilem hunc fungum, ut peculiare genus, in memoriam beat. 

 Battarras, ob suam Fungorum agii Ariminensis historiam de Ee botanica bene 

 merentis, deuominavi." The author mentioned wrote his name as Battarra. 



