116 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



Tliis species superficially resembles small plants of L. glabellum Pk. so 

 closely that it is difficult to distinguish them. When cut open, -especially 

 if gathered immature and allowed to ripen in the laboratory, it sometimes 

 also presents a red-purple section; but this does not depend upon the color 

 of the spores, which afford constant and certain means of distinguishing 

 the two species, since in tliis they are about as in L. gemmatum, while in 

 L. glabelhim they are nearly as in L. constellatum or the related species 

 of the puri^le-spored section. 



10. Lycoperdon coloratum Pk. — Round, and somewhat depressed and 

 contracted at the base, three-eighths to one inch; from pure white passing 

 into yellowish and at maturity buff; granular-mealy; finally glistening and 

 dotted with minute dark granules that persist or often rub away from large 

 areas. Spores and capillitium buff, the former paler, round, smooth, 

 stalkless, 4 to 5 //. — PI. 2, f. 2. — On the ground in damp woods; August. 



11. Lycoperdon pulcherrimum B. & C. (X. Frostii Pk.) — Obovoid, an inch 

 to an inch and a half in diameter and about as high. Peridium coffee-color 

 at maturity, covered with very deciduous slender white spines, often three- 

 sixteenths inch long, clustered by their tips; usually smooth and glossy 

 after their fall. Capillitium at last red-purple, spores varying from pale 

 buff to reddish-purple, round, with very low colorless warts, nearly stalk- 

 less, 4 to 6.5 7/. — PL 3, f. 1. — Open grass land, not uncommon. 



In this and other species of the purple-spored Proteoids the pedicels of 

 the spores, even in mature specimens, are sometimes 2 to 4 /i long, whereas 

 in other groups the species that have not long pedicelled spores very rarely 

 show pedicels much over 1 /^ long. 



The spores of the group of species which follows are very uniform, 

 coarsely warted and usually short-stalked. As shown by Peck (U. S. spe- 

 cies of Lycoperdon, 18), they are intermingled with fragmentary colorless, 

 rods, to which they are not attached, but that represent the fallen remnants 

 of long sterigmata, as may be seen by examining young specimens. In tliis 

 paper (}). 22) and in 32 Rep. N. Y. Museum, p. 68, Peck states that L. joul- 

 clierrimun B. & C. is evidently the same as L. pedicellatum Pk., an opinion 

 which I shared until, in looking through the puff-balls of the Curtis herba- 

 rium, which Dr. Farlow obligingly placed iu my hands, I found the type 

 of L. pulclierrimum, gathered in Pennsylvania, in 1852, and preserved un- 

 der the number 3933. The description by Berkeley (Notices of N. A. Fungi, 

 50, No. 336, — Grevillea, ii, 51) is certainly more applicable to L. pedicella- 

 tum than to this species, especially as regards the size and color of the spores; 

 but unless two entirely different things were collected under this number, 

 so that Berkeley's description was not drawn up from a duphcate of the 

 Curtis type, there can be little doubt that L. Frostii and not L. pedicellatum 

 is a synonym of L. pulcherrimum. 



12. Lycoperdon atropurpureum Vitt. — Extremely variable in size 

 and form, three-fourths to two and one-half inches in diameter, one and 

 one-fourth to three inches high, obconical or pyriform to subglobose; nearly 



