46 



;!poridia with which they are charged, through the ruptured cup, in so many tiny 

 jets as to form a perfectly visible dust-cloud. 



The Genus Peziza is so numerously endowed with species, that, for the purpose 

 of systematic arrangement, it is desirable to shut off from it all allied growths 

 which have any constant peculiarity of form or function. Ascobolus, the Ascua- 

 flinger, is a Peziza which ejects its spore-cases along with the spores they hold. 

 This, and the fact that the ascus is usually broader and less tubular, constitute 

 the only differences between it and Peziza, which retains to the last the effete 

 ascus wall. I now present to you the plants, and drawings and descriptions of 

 the two species I wish more especially to bring to your knowledge. They have 

 been laid before Mr. Berkeley and Mr. Broome, who have decided that they are 

 novel species, an opinion with which I am quite satisfied to.agree, and they will 

 be included in the century of new forms which these gentlemen are about to 

 publish in the Annals of Natural History. To the one species they have given 

 the specific name of Argentexis, from the extreme brilliancy of its silvery white- 

 ness ; and to the other, which is not less beautiful, they have appended at 

 my request the name of Woolhopcnsia, in memory of the Club, which more than 

 any other, cultivates mycological science. 



Ascoholus argenteus (section Ryparobius), occurs, scattered or single, and is 

 very minute, subsessile, or attached by a very small foot ; at first of a pure hyaline 

 silvery white ; finally, when empty, pallid and sodden, or brownish. When 

 young its form is sub-globular, externally granular, surmounted by a fringe o 

 long hairs ; then it becomes hemispherical, sub-granular to smooth on the outside 

 the marginal edge supporting a close row of long, nearly even, upright hairs. 

 The disc is black, but marked by the projecting ends of the more ripe asci. The 

 asci are broad, being widest towards their upper end, which is formed by a sub- 

 conical cap, which springs from a visible but transparent ring, and they gradually 

 narrow below, with flexture, to a tubular base. The sporidia are numerous (64 

 normally), shuttle-shaped, smooth, colourless, of uniform substance. The plant 

 is found upon rabbits' dung. The cups for the most part are attached to filaments 

 of mucor caninus which may be covering the pellets of the duug. Probably, 

 however, they have only been elevated thus by the growth or shrinking of the mucor 

 threads away from their orginal matrix. The row of hali-s which fringes the 

 margin is rarely doubled, or only in part. They meaiure on the average "0025 in 

 height by '00025 in thickness, and form quite one-third the height of the plant, 

 but become evanescent with age. They are stiff, very regular, thickish, blunt- 

 ended, and unseptate. The ring, which is readily perceived in the ascus, is 

 formed by a thickening which is semicircular in section applied to the inner 

 surface cf the wall, and doubtless stiffens it much. The pinch of the growing 

 asci upon the ripened vessel which now projects above the surface of the disc to 

 just the level of this ring or a little below it, is thus counteracted, and the 



