70 Minnesota Plant Life. 



sidewalks, in the cracks, or they may be found attached to twigs 

 or bits of decaying wood. Each fruit-body is shaped like a vase 

 or bowl, at the bottom of which half a dozen white or purple 

 egg-like bodies are lying, so that it has the appearance of some 

 tiny nest with eggs, hence the popular name which has been 

 applied. If one attempts to pull out the "eggs" it will be found 

 that each of them is flattened like two watch crystals placed 

 together and is attached by a delicate cord growing from the 

 "nest" and fixing itself upon the middle of one side of the eggs. 

 It must be understood that the term "egg" as used here, and as 

 used also for the young stinkhorns, should not suggest that such 

 bodies have any of the real meaning of an egg, since it is applied 

 solely on account of their shape. In the bird's-nest-fungus each 

 "egg" is a miniature puff-ball, with spores enclosed within its 

 membrane, and the whole bird's-nest-fungus fruit-body might 

 be described as comparable to a little group of stemless puff- 

 balls enclosed in a common vase or urn. 



Hard-skinned puff-balls. Yet another sort of puff-ball is 

 readily distinguished by its hard nut-like shell. Such plants are 

 called hard-skinned puff-balls and some kinds of them grow to 

 be larger than an ordinary coffee cup. They are white or brown 

 in color and almost spherical in shape. When they open to eject 

 their spores the whole top splits by four or five radiating clefts, 

 and the sections of the shell curve back from the centre some- 

 what as did the outer skin of the earth-star. As they separate, 

 the fluffy spores and threads of the interior are exposed as an 

 umber mass upon which the wind has an opportunity to play, 

 thus carrying off the spores to other favorable regions for devel- 

 opment. 



Ball-tossing puff-balls. In some respects more remarkable 

 than any of the others is the ball-tossing puff-ball. This is a 

 small variety, not larger than an ordinary pill, but a little larger 

 than the pellets of the homeopathist. It occurs in clusters upon 

 decaying wood and looks somewhat like slime-mould fruit only 

 it has a more leathery skin, and would be recognized upon close 

 observation to be different from the slime-mould fruits in out- 

 ward appearance as well as in inward structure. The ball-toss- 

 ing puff-ball has three layers of skin, one outside of the other. 

 The two outer skins become perforate at the end of the ball, 



