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_ A few of the Pezizz not only lose entirely their cup-like form, 
but become confluent, as in the case of P. confiuens, which thus 
_ produces a nearly uniform stratum, distinguishable from similar 
Hymenomycetes, as Corticium, only by the fruit. The Peziz 
occur chiefly on decaying vegetable matter or on dead sticks, but 
the larger kinds mostly grow on the earth. 
Out of more than 900 described species, British and exotic, 
many of which are probably the same species, quoted under 
different names by various authors, we claim about 108 for our 
_ district, of which we owe a good many very interesting kinds to 
_ my friend, Mr. Bucknall, of Clifton, a very zealous and accurate 
mycologist, who is now publishing the result of his researches in 
_ the Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society. 
In the classification of so large a group as is constituted by the 
Family Ascomycetes, and especially in the Genus Peziza, many 
_ difficulties must necessarily occur, and the different organs they 
possess have been seized on by mycologists as presenting characters 
sufficient to separate the members of it into genera and sub-genera, 
some authors selecting one particular organ as most distinctive, 
some another, but these systems have generally failed to con- 
_ stitute truly natural divisions, and one is often compelled to fall 
back on Fries’s arrangement as most true to nature. If, for 
instance, an author constitutes his chief character on the divisions 
of the fruit, as to its being continuous, or once, or several times 
septate, he is soon landed in difficulties by finding fruit, in this 
respect alike, occurring in species far removed from one another 
in natural affinity. And as each writer takes perhaps one par- 
ticular character for his leading notion and founds his genera 
upon it, while another selects another point of resemblance as the 
z most important, the result is that the system is overloaded with 
heaps of genera, many of which are founded on insufficient 
grounds, to the great discouragement of students, and the un- 
necessary complication of the subject. As an instance, Fiickel. 
makes a genus of Pezize out of certain species characterised, as 
