488 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 
common to Britain, or about 31 per cent. The largest number of 
recorded species are in Victoria, being 1,142, closely followed by 
Queensland, with 1,089, while New South Wales has only 454. 
Of edible fungi the number is 84, belonging to the Hymenomy- 
cetes mainly ; but a few to the Gastromycetes and Discomycetes, 
There are reckoned to be about 45,000 species of fungi alto- 
gether, and Australian species (2,480) form about one eighteenth 
of the whole, while British species (5,040) constitute about one- 
ninth of the whole. 
And, finally, the number of Tasmanian species common to Vic- 
toria is 197, or 894 per cent. of the entire Tasmanian Fungus- 
flora. . 5 : : : ; : : : ; : 
When we consider how favourable our climate is to the develop- 
ment of fungi, parasitic and otherwise, and particularly to the 
family of rusts which play such havoc at times with our cereal 
crops, it behoves us to pay more attention to them in the future 
than we have done in the past. Hitherto they have been treated 
more as an appendage than as an integral part of a Flora Austra- 
liensis, and while our neglected treasures of the vegetable kingdom 
claim our attention, let us not despise these so-called lower plants, 
for they are often a menace to our agricultural and horticultural 
prosperity, because we have so long neglected them. 
No. 6.—UNDERGROUND FUNGI OF TASMANIA. 
By L. Ropway, Hobart. 
(Read Tuesday, January 11, 1898.) 
THE term underground, when applied to fungi, though not scientific, 
appeals sufficiently clearly to the student of mycology. All the 
terrestrial fungi, except moulds, might really be termed “ under: 
ground”; but the sense in which it is used in mycology is to indi- 
‘cate fungi that habitually produce their spore-producing body 
‘beneath the surface, and either disintegrate there, depend for 
exposure on denudation, or the digging of fung loving animals. 
The fungi that have this habit belong to two distinct groups, 
and appear to be confined to these. The one lot we meet with in 
the Gasteromycetes—that is, the family of which the puff-ball is 
the type—a group of the great sub-class Lusidiomycetes. The 
other forms a group of itself, the Z'wberozdes, or Truffle group, in 
the big sub-class Ascomycetes. 
