108 Journal of Mycology [Vol. 13 



twentieth the two large bunches of eggs were found in a low 

 damp place, rich in vegetable debris, one bunch was so badly 

 eaten by the fly larvae that none of the eggs hatched, but two 

 of the eggs of the larger bunch hatched. This bunch is seen in 

 photograph No. i then No. 2 shows it with two eggs hatched, 

 and some had been removed from bunch being destroyed by the 

 larvae. 



On November the fourteenth, in an old cornfield near a 

 small creek in a low but well drained place, some four or five 

 eggs, also as many expanded plants and quite a number of de- 

 cayed ones were found. All of the gleba had been cleaned off 

 of the older plants by the flies and one with the gleba just be- 

 ginning to deliguesce was a perfect mass of large blue bottle 

 flies, so thoroughly had the flies done their work that not a drop 

 of the gleba had fallen on the stipe or on the ground from any 

 of the expanded plants. On November the twentieth in an old 

 cornfield in a jatch of Johnson grass {Sorghum halapcnsc), I 

 found a second lot of eggs and plants, some twenty to thirty in 

 all, and finally on November the twenty-third I collected fifty- 

 three eggs and eight to ten expanded plants in twenty minutes' 

 time, from a spot about ten yards square. Some of these eggs 

 were as large as a man's fist, and one weighed fourteen ounces. 

 This was also in an old corn field, on the margin of the same 

 creek. These eggs were by far the finest and the largest I had 

 yet found and their abundance fairly made my '"'eyes bulge;" 

 from this "garden" alone, I gathered in all about one hundred 

 eggs and plants. They were growing in limited areas, as if the 

 mycelium had started from some central point and had spread 

 for four or five yards in more or less of a circle. 



I had to be careful not to step on the eggs they were so 

 thick in the center of this circle; I just piled them up in 

 heaps like potatoes, some fifteen to twenty in a pile. The 

 eggs were usually about one-third to one-fourth out of the 

 ground and being of a purplish tint and in bare soil they 

 were easily seen. They were especially numerous in the old 

 corn rows, often from one to four or more eggs being being 

 found at the base of each old corn stalk, the mycelium usually 

 filling the corn roots and extending down into the soil twelve to 

 eighteen inches and then branchig out in all directions. All of 

 this lot were collected after our first frost and freeze, but most 

 of them opened in my "incubator." 



As late as the middle of January, after snow, sleet and 

 severe cold, I collected some four or five live eggs and two or 

 three freshly expanded plants. The expanded plants were very 

 short, the pilei barely being clear of the volva. The large eggs did 

 not make such tall plants, the extra size making a larger pileus, 

 more jelly, and thicker peridium of the volva. Often this inner 

 peridium would be so thick and tough that it did not rupture 



