364 



The second species is Pestal : funerea, another of Desm : plants, which arrows 

 on the twigs and branches of cypress, and which I have found in fair abundance 

 at Stratford-on-Avon on thuja. 



The third is P. lignicola (Cooke), growing on chips, known to the Woolhope 

 Club, inasmuch as Mr. Griffith Morris has met with it more than once. 



The fourth is P. truiicatida (Fckl). which I found in May, 1876, on willow 

 twigs at Forden. 



And the fifth is P. stellata (B. & Curtis), which was obtained by myself on the 

 leaves of holly at Hermitage, in Berks, in September, 1879. There were several 

 bundles of holly tied up, evidently to be carried away for burning ; they had been 

 cut when green, and had become quite dead. It was on these dead leaves the 

 fungus grew. 



These two last species have never been recorded as British up to the present 

 night. 



But about those beautifully hyaline appendages on the crest of the spores of 

 Pestalozsia, what purpose do they serve? They cannot be useless, or they 

 would not have been created. They remind us somewhat of the splendid arrange- 

 ments we find on some of the composite plants 1)1 phanerogamic botany — the 

 goat's beard, the colt's foot, the common dandelion. Their parachute heads are 

 most useful in conveying the seeds, when they leave the parent plant, to a distance, 

 so that thereby they get fresh soil on which to grow, and they are also of great 

 service in depositing the seed itself heels downwards in the ground. Still, useful 

 as these appendages are in the Compositw, we can scarcely imagine it likely that 

 the Pestalozzia would need to be transferred in this way, especially when 

 P. monochoete has only one hyaline appendage, the other species having three, 

 four, or five of them. They certainly are analogous in fungi to the flowering plants, 

 to which reference has been made. But beyond their being made for the pleasure 

 of the Great Creator, we are not able to supply any specific cause for them. 



Are they not very short lived ? I mean the appendages of the Pestalozsia ! 

 I mention this in the hope that some of the veterans, who have studied the most 

 minute forms of fungi, may confirm my idea that they may aid in attaching the spore 

 to the place where it begins its vegetation until maturity — that in process of time 

 the appendages die away, and leave the spore with unmistakable proof that they 

 have been present, and that still further on they are not to be distinguished at all 

 from the genus Stilhospora. I remember examining some spores in various stages 

 and found them from a true Pestalozsia, to an equally true Stilhospora. 



As regards the life-history of the Pestalozzia, after the appendages have ceased 

 to do their work, I am not aware that any attempt has ever been made to trace 

 it, but that they are only forms of fungi which will eventually be resolved in 

 process of development into higher forms, I have no doubt. That they are not 

 autonomous we may feel certain. But what do they become ? 



