280 FUNGI : GASTEROMYCETES, 



the size to which it attains, and gets paragraphed in our local news- 

 papers. Specimens of the size of a man's head are not uncommon. 

 At one of our Club meetings the late Mr, George Darling of Fow- 

 berry exhibited a specimen which measured 4 feet 9 inches in cir- 

 cumference, — the growth, probably, of a single day *. 



(2.) Found by Mrs. Selby on Polytrichum undulatum in the dean 

 at Twizell house. Very rare, and most beautiful. It is the Lean- 

 gium Trevelyani of Dr. Greville (Scot. Crypt. Flora, iii. pi. 132), 

 who has figured it with his usual skill, and gave its name to com- 

 memorate its discoverer. Sir Walter Calvery Trevelyan, Bart. Dr. 

 Greville writes, " This is the most elegant of all the minute Gastro- 

 myci I ever beheld. Whether we regard the extreme symmetry of 

 its form, or its delicate structure and pleasing colour, it forms one of 

 the most charming little objects the eye can possibly rest upon. A 

 diminutive moss infused life and hope into the exhausted frame of 

 the iVfrican traveller Mungo Park, when he had cast himself down 

 to die ; the beauty of its minute foliage brought to perfection in the 

 desert, at once raised his eye to that Power which had not failed to 

 nourish the delicate structure it had created : and is there any one 

 of taste and right feeling, in whose breast some similar emotion does 

 not arise at the sight of so perfect a form as that of our minute 

 Leangium ?" 



(3.) The specimens were named by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 

 They Avere referred to St. fasciculata in Berw. Fl. ii. p. 191. 



(4.) Berkeley and Broome in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. 2. v. 

 p. 366. — It is figured on our Plate XI. fig. 4. 



(5.) The Sc. pustula of the Berw. Fl. ii. p. 137. See Ann. Nat. 

 Hist. i. p. 205. 



(6.) The Ergot. See Med. and Phys. Journ. xxxii. p. 99 : Curtis, 

 Brit. Grasses, p. 73-76 : Ann. and Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. ix. p. 494. 

 I have never observed it in any cultivated cereal in our district. It 

 is common on the Glycerise and Dactylis glomerata. 



(7.) The Erysiphes frequently do great harm to the peas in our 

 gardens and fields by the sort of mould or mildew they spread over 

 the leaves. The mildew of the turnip-crop ; and the sort of meali- 

 ness which so often crimps and disfigures the leaves of the Hawthorn 



* The most remarkable instance of rapid growth in a vegetable, says Dr. 

 Lindley, "is stated by Junghuns, who has known the Bovista (Lycoper- 

 don) giganteum, a kind of Fungus, in damp weather, grow in a single 

 night from a mere point to the size of a huge gourd ; so that, supposing 

 its cellules to be not less than ^^^^j of an inch in diameter, and it is probable 

 they are nearer the ^^o, it may be estimated to have consisted, when full- 

 grown, of about 47,000,000,000 cellules ; and supposing it to have gained 

 its size in the course of twelve hours, its cells must have developed at the 

 rate of 4,000,000,000 per hour, or of more than sixty-six milhons in the 

 minute." See Hooker's Journ. of Botany, i. p. 216. — But the growth 

 may be owing, as Mv. Ward believes, more to the enlargement of the cells 

 than to this prodigious increase of them. 



