220 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



to become darker with age, assutning brown or pinkish-brown 

 hues. The upper part often cracks into angular areas or patches, 

 the chinks being paler than the surface. When fully mature the 

 upper part of the rind breaks up into fragments which fall away 

 revealing the dull purplish-brown mass of spores and filaments 

 within. After these have disappeared there still remains a cup- 

 shaped base which is suggestive of the name of this puff ball and 

 which sometimes persists all winter. From such an effete 

 specimen the species was first named and described. 



This species grows in pastures, sometimes in cultivated ground. 

 It appears in August and September. In preparing it and the 

 preceding species for the table select immature specimens whose 

 flesh is yet pure white. Peel them and cut the flesh into slices 

 one-fourth to one-half an inch thick. These slices may be fried 

 in butter and seasoned according to taste or they may first be 

 dipped in beaten egg and then fried and seasoned. In this way 

 they make a kind of mushroom fritters or omelet that is liked by 

 almost every one. If preferred, the beaten egg may be thickened 

 with bread crumbs or crushed cracker. Some who are very fond 

 of the Common mushroom fry the plain slices in butter, adding a 

 mushroom or two to increase the true mushroom flavor, or they 

 stew them in milk or cream, adding mushrooms if convenient, as 



before. 



Discomycetese. 



Morels, Helvellas and Mitkula. 

 The Discomycetese or disJc fungi are evidently so named 

 because in many of the species the fertile or spore-bearing sur- 

 face is flat like a disk. It includes also many cup-shaped fungi 

 in which the fertile surface is concave like the inside of a saucer 

 or cup. But in the group which contains the edible species here 

 to be noticed the fertile surface is neither flat nor concave, but 

 decidedly convex, conical, oval or even cylindrical or club 

 shaped. In some species also it is very irregular or uneven. In 

 all the species, however unlike they may be in other respects, 

 there is this agreement, the upper or exterior surface is the 

 spore-bearing surface and the spores are developed in thin mem- 

 branous sacks, not on basidia within the plant as in the case of 

 puff balls. In the morels and allied species the plant consists 

 of a stem and cap as in an ordinary mushroom, but these are 



