226 
Peziza found by Dr. Chapman, and forwarded to me in May last, correspond 
exactly with Sowerby’s original specimens. They grew on the perpendicular 
surface of the damp plaster wall already alluded to, presenting the appearance 
so faithfully described by Sowerby of a number of minute salmon-coloured knobs 
not larger than a pin’s head, resting on a thin white cottony film spread on the 
plaster. By the aid of a pocket lens they can be seen when moist and fresh to be 
clothed with fine white transparent hairs which collapse in drying. The accom- 
panying figure will convey a better idea than any verbal description. 
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF PARAPHYSES, 
By M. C. Cooks, M.A. 
In the following observations all illustrations are drawn from the Discomy- 
ectes for the sake of limiting the field of research, and because on other accounts a 
larger variety of specimens came under observation than could have been anticipated 
in other sections of the Ascomycetes. As no essential differences can be predicated 
in the structure and functions of the paraphyses, this will not effect the general 
conclusions. 
It is scarcely necessary to allude to the structure of Discomycetes, as exem- 
plified in Peziza, which may be accepted as the type. The cups, at first closed, 
have externally a dermal series of compact cells, differing from those beneath 
them, and often furnished with dermal appendages, such as hairs or furfuraceous 
cells. Beneath the dermal series lie the mesothalamial cells, in most instances 
regular and uniform, but when (verging on Urnula and Cenangium, elongated. 
tough, and more or less fibrous. A third series of smaller cells are superimposed, 
but the one so gradually merges into the other that, usually, the exact point where 
one series ends and the other begins cannot be determined. This third series is 
the subhymenial tissue on which the fourth or final series lining the interior of the 
cups is based. It is to this fourth series that our attention must be specially 
directed. If a section through a cup of one of the larger species of Peziza be made 
it will be seen that the interior, or fourth series which we may term the hymenium 
and which terminates in the disc of the cup has quite a distinct structure from any 
of the other series. It is composed entirely of elongated parallel cells, which have 
their base on the subhymenial tissue and their apex in the disc. From the 
earliest to the latest period in the history of the cup this distinction prevails. At 
first the hymenial cells are scarcely distinct, but they soon become evident as 
long filiform cells lying parallel to each other, amongst which at a later period 
other and broader cells are generated by growth upward from the subhymenial 
tissue. These latter cells are the asci, the former being the paraphyses. It will be 
noted here that the fourth or hymenial cells are a portion of the vegetative system 
of the cup, being in fact the inner series of the cup cells. In the same manner they 
are an integral portion of the club in Geoglossum, and form the superior series 
before a single ascus is developed from the subhymenial tissue. This is not by any 
a 
