ture and spores. 5 The only difference I can nole is that the Ceylonese plant has 

 a thicker cup, over two mm. thick, while my specimens from Brazil are a scant 

 mm. thick. I am inclined to think that in time they will prove to be exactly 

 the same plant. 6 



LIGHT ON BOVISTA TOMENTOSA. 



Ever since we began work with the puff balls, there has always 

 been one species of Europe that was a mystery to us. This is 

 Bovista tomentosa, as illustrated by Vittadini and Quelet, (cfr. page 



263). We have never seen any 

 Bovista from Europe with a tomen- 

 tosc cortex, but we have always 

 had faith in Vittadini's work, as we 

 have worked after him enough to 

 know there was something back of 

 everything he wrote, and that Vit- 

 tadini did not belong to that class 

 of mycologists who imagine things. 

 We believe that light has been 

 thrown on Bovista tomentosa from 

 specimens received from Australia. 

 It is a long ways to go to hunt up 

 evidence as to European plants. 

 Flo 232. The genus Bovista is a rare genus 



conexof Bovista tomentcsa enlarged, x 6. in Australia, strange to say, and 



neither of the common species of 



Europe and America, Bovista plumbea, nigrescens and Pila, is known 

 to occur there. I found at Kew a single collection of a Bovista 

 from New Zealand named by Berkeley, Bovista brunnea. It had a 

 smooth peridium, and was well named brunnea, as its chief dis- 

 tinction from the common Bovista plumbea of Europe seemed to be 

 that the peridium was brown. Then we received a specimen from 

 some unknown friend in New Zealand, and then the same brown 

 species from two European correspondents (Professor C. Massalongo, 

 Italy, and Professor Jos. Rompel, Switzerland). We referred the 

 European collections to the New Zealand species. Plants since re- 

 ceived from Walter W. Froggatt and also Walter Gills, Australia, are 

 this same brown species, but both are accompanied by young speci- 

 mens and the cortex is composed of small spines (might be called 

 tomentose) and it is the only true Bovista that does not have a smooth 

 cortex. (See Fig. 232, enlarged x 6.) We feel that this is a solution 

 of the Bovista tomentosa puzzle of Europe and that Bovista brunnea is 

 an old specimen of Bovista tomentosa. I ought to add that Dr. Hol- 

 los has gotten the matter right as far as the European species is con- 



5 The spores of both species are unusually uniform in size, a scant 2omic., ami a little 

 smaller, not more than one or two microns in the Brazilian plant In the tvpe specimens I 

 do not find any spores over 20 mic., and the measurement, " 24-28 mic.," is too large. 



6 When Father Kick found the spores of his plant to be scarcely 20 mic. in diameter, he 

 was justified in not referring it to the Ceylonese species, described as ha'vint> spores " 24-28 mic." 

 But like many so-called "new species,"" it will develop, I think, that it was based simply 

 on the error of the "old species " 



