259 



The peridia are confluent, or verv rarely separate, nearly globose when young, 

 afterwards subturbinate, from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch across, adhering 

 to the wood by a broadish base, pale brown, or fawn-coloured, clothed on the 

 exterior with a matted filamentous coat, the filaments of which are thickened 

 towards their extremities and furnished with divaricate or deflexed spines ; the 

 peridia dehisce more or less irregularly at the top, exposing a mass of sporangia 

 embedded in a tenacious pale transparent jelly. The sporangia are disc-shaped, 

 at first dirty-white, afterwards shining dark chestnut-brown, somewhat rugose. 

 A transverse section of the sporangium exhibits three distinct layers of tissue ; 

 the exterior thin, tough, fibroso-cartilaginous, which is underlaid by a fibroso- 

 cellular sub-gelatinous layer, from which arises the third, or hymenial layer, con- 

 sisting of upright closely-packed clavate or cylindrical cells— the basidia— which 

 have on their summits 1, 2, to 3 spicules, on the points of which are produced the 

 almost spherical spores. Intermixed with the basidia there occur at distant 

 intervals cystidia, which are ventricose cells with an elongated narrow neck, 

 truncate at the summit, resembling a Florence flask, except that the base is 

 narrowed into a stem. These cystidia are twice the length of the basidia, and have 

 usually fine granular matter collected in a little heap at their summits, similar 

 to what we often see in the Afiaricini, and to which, as you know, Mr. Worthing- 

 ton Smith attributes very important functions. I may venture to say that these 

 cystidia have never been previously observed in the hymenium of a Nidularia. I 

 have carefully compared this specimen with N. pisiformis, a specimen of which 

 was lent me by Mr. C. E. Broome, and it differs in the following particulars :— 

 .The receptacles are confluent, the exterior is not tuberculate, there are cystidia in 

 the hymenium, and the spores are smaller than in N. pisiformis. 



If then my examination and comparison of these plants be correct, we have 

 in Dr. Keith's Scottish specimen a second species added to our British list, 

 namely, Nidularia confluens, Fries at Nordh. The description of thin species 

 is as follows : — 



Rootless, peridium subglobose, even, villous, sporangia orbicular, wrinkled, 

 brown. — Fries et Xordh. 



On fragments of wood, growing in company with Crucibulum vulgare. 

 Autumn. 



Nidularia confluens. Fries et Nordh, Symh. Gast., p. 3 ; Tulasne, Ann. Sc. 

 Nat., 1884, p. 96. Nidularia farcta (confluens), Fries, Sys. Myc, ii., p. 301. 



Habit nearly the same as Cyathus scuteUaris, Roth. Without roots. Sporan- 

 gia (peridia) nearly round, aggregate, somewhat confluent, extremely irregular, 

 villous, almost even, persistent, twice the size of a pea, dirty white, glabrous 

 inside, at length broad, and ruptured in a lacerated manner. No epiphragmium 

 indeed, but above the sporangium is composed as it were of a double membrane 

 which however is obsolete. Sporangiola (sporangia of Tul.) orbicular, lentiform, 

 altogether destitute of an umbilicus, about one line broad, wrinkled, glabrous 

 (fixed by a slender thread at the margin?). Nucleus thin, black.— Fries et 

 Nordh. 



There is a third species, which, for some reason unknown to me, has been 



