58 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



australis from a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Rose- 

 dale, Gippsland. They varied in size from a large apple to a 

 large irregular mass measuring 24 or 30 inches round, very dark 

 brown, and the surface rough, with dark warts. On cutting, the 

 section appeared like boiled sago ; when fresh it was fairly soft, 

 and I was induced to taste it, but found that it had no flavour 

 and was very tough. I tried to cook it in various ways— boiled, 

 fried, toasted — but still it remained tough and tasteless. I turned 

 up Berkeley's " Cryptogamic Botany" (1857), and found 

 " Mylitta australis, or the Native Bread of the Australians, is a 

 useful article, and when dry in some conditions looks like hard, 

 compacted lumps of sago." Again, at p. 288, he says: — "And 

 Mylitta, which is sometimes several inches across, is abundant in 

 some parts of Australia, where it is eaten by the natives. Fresh 

 specimens have a sub-acid smell, and little taste ; but we have 

 seen others of an extremely compact horny texture, resembling a 

 mass of sago forcibly compressed into a solid ball." 



In 1885, when I first consulted Mr. A. W. Howitt, who was 

 then warden of the Gippsland goldfields, concerning the 

 Mylitta as an article of food, I understood him to say that it 

 was so used by the aboriginals. But either I must have 

 misunderstood him, or he must have found reason to change his 

 opinion, as he has since assured me that the natives never use it 

 as an article of food, and that it has no nourishing properties 

 whatever. 



I examined carefully, by means of the microscope, not only the 

 specimens sent from Rosedale, but quantities of other specimens 

 obtained in Walhalla, Mafifra, and other places, but never could 

 get any spores or asci, or any other kind of reproductive organ. 

 At last I gave them up for the time, and put them away into a 

 kind of cellar which I had excavated in the side of the hill. 

 The cellar had plenty of air, but was somewhat dark and damp. 

 About two months afterwards I visited the cellar for something, 

 and was astonished to find apparently fungoid parasitic growths 

 on some of the Mylitta. I exam.ined them carefully, and saw that 

 they were belonging to the genus Polyporei. 



The structure of the new fungus was undoubtedly mycelial 

 strands, not sclerotia, and the reproductive organs were naked 

 spores falling from the lower surface, which was pierced with 

 holes, equalling the description of a Polyporus. 



I must confess that at the time I did not understand that I had 

 really solved the problem of the reproduction of Mylitta. But I 

 was greatly interested in what I saw, and made coloured drawings 

 of one of the specimens. I also placed some spores on slides for 

 the microscope, and exhibited the whole at a meeting of the Field 

 Naturalists' Club on nth November, 1885 (^Victorian Naturalist, 

 vol. ii., !)p. 94 and 109). 



