702 Transactions of the Society. 



or jointly with other authors, having described forty-four new forms. 

 The present paper contains descriptions of one hundred and twenty-nine 

 species, forty-nine of which are European, if Bonorden's imperfectly 

 described species are included. 



The genus is cosmopolitan, extending from Disco Island, 70° N. lat., 

 to the extreme south of New Zealand, 47° S. lat. It occurs in all low- 

 land tropics, and ascends the Himalayas to between seven and eight 

 thousand feet, where L. gemmatum Batsch, a common British species, 

 was collected by Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker. Eighty-five species are 

 confined to the northern hemisphere, twenty-seven to the southern, and 

 fifteen are common to both. Ten species are peculiar to Cuba, and seven 

 to Ceylon. L. pusillum Batsch, a common British species about the 

 size of a marble, is represented in the Eoyal Herbarium, Kew, from 

 Europe, Tropical and South Africa, Lower Pegu, East Nepaul, China, 

 Java, Ceylon, Benin Islands, North America, South America, Australia, 

 and New Zealand. 



The species vary much in colour, shape, and surface texture at different 

 ages, being usually white, and warted or spinose when young, becoming 

 brownish or silvery with age, and frequently perfectly smooth, owing to 

 the falling away of the " cortex " ; hence the difficulty, in the absence of 

 type specimens or figures, of ascertaining exactly what species correspond 

 to the meagre descriptions, drawn up almost entirely from external 

 characters, by the pioneers of mycology, who in many instances have 

 given different names to the same species at various stages of growth. 

 Vittadini was the first to employ microscopic along with external 

 characters in the discrimination of species, and he appears to have con- 

 sidered that when once the structure had been worked out, external 

 characters alone were sufficient for the recognition of the species, as 

 three specimens sent to the Bev. M. J. Berkeley as L. defossum Vitt., and 

 which externally presented no differences, proved on microscopic exami- 

 nation to be three distinct species : one the true plant intended, another 

 with coarsely warted spores, and the third imperfect, but vdth a well- 

 developed sterile basal stratum, and smooth spores almost twice the size 

 of those in the species intended. 



The spores are supported on pedicels or sterigmata springing from 

 basidia, and in some species the pedicels break away from the basidia and 

 remain attached to the spores, a character considered by Peck, in his 

 arrangement of the United States species of Lycoperdon, as being of 

 primary importance ; but the examination of a large series of specimens 

 proves this character to be of little or no value, the persistence of the 

 pedicels depending entirely on the relative development of the specimen 

 when collected, and in almost every instance where the plants have been 

 for many years in the herbarium, the pedicels bave broken away. The 

 spores are very constant in size, shape, surface marking, and colour, but 

 the last character is only of specific value when the plant is quite ripe, 

 and the spores readily fall out of the ruptured peridium, as in almost 

 eveiy instance they are at first some shade of yellow, and only attain the 

 darker tints when ripe. The colour characters used in the present work 

 refer to the tint of spores in the mass when thrown down on a white 

 surface. 



