THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 127 



quarter sheet they are also called Palaeozoic ; but it is to be 

 remembered that this map was "amended" before publication, 

 after Daintree left the service. In his report on the Ballan 

 district, in 1866, Daintree adopts Sir Frederick M 'Coy's age of 

 Mesozoic, and Sir Frederick now calls them Triassic. His 

 reference is, however, not very generally followed, and the greater 

 number of geologists consider them as of Permo-carboniferous 

 age, and comparable to beds with marine fossils in New South 

 Wales, in which glacial action is also evident. — T. S. Hall. 



NOTES ON THE GENUS CALOCERA. 



By Henry T. Tisdall, F.L.S. 



{Read before Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 11th July, 1894-) 



On the 30th May last an excursion was made by several 

 members of the Club to Sassafras Gully, in the Dandenong 

 Ranges. As the season was not very propitious for other pursuits, 

 the members devoted their energies to collecting fungi. One of 

 the younger members of the party, Master Norman Martin, a 

 nephew of Mr. C. Frost, F.L.S., was fortunate in discovering 

 what I trust may prove to be a new species of Calocera. In 

 order to explain my reason for supposing that it may be a new 

 species, I would like to state briefly, for the benefit of those 

 members who have not studied this subject, the basis on which 

 the classification of fungi is determined. In doing so, I shall 

 only follow out the particular divisions that will lead up to this 

 particular plant. The classification of the two main divisions 

 is founded on the way in which the spores are produced. Any 

 member who has handled fungi may have remarked that a quan- 

 tity of fine dust falls from them. This is very noticeable in the 

 common puff-ball, from whence a little cloud of such dust arises 

 when the plant is disturbed. Each particle of this dust is a spore. 

 The spores themselves are composed each of a single cell con- 

 taining protoplasm and a nucleus. They are so exceedingly light 

 that immense numbers float about in the air. Dr. Cooke remarks — 

 " Recent microscopic examinations of the common atmosphere 

 show that large quantities of spores are continually suspended." 

 This fact is well known to good housewives who carefully cover 

 up such substances as jam, &c, because they learn from expe- 

 rience that if they do not a plentiful crop of mould will soon 

 appear — such mould being, in fact, a species of fungus springing 

 from the lately-suspended spores, which have at last found their 

 proper matrix. 



To return to our classification, in one great division the 

 spores are produced at the end of tiny branchlets, or they spring 

 from ends or sides of very fine threads, and in various other 



