8-5 to 12 X 4 ^; Mount Lofty, June, on wood, sporangia 870 x 700 fi, spores 7 to 

 7-5 X 5 /A, and on manure by roadside, spores 107 to 12-5 jn, occasionally 

 21 x4-5 /^,' identified by Lloyd (No. 652). 



Lycoperdaceae. 



PODAXON. 



352. Podaxon aegyptiacum, Mont. Clel. and Cheel, Jour. Proc. Roy. 

 Soc. N.S. Wales. New South Wales : 20 miles east of Broken Hill, April, 

 spores elliptical, dark bronze-brown, 13 to 138x9 to 10 /x. South Australia: 

 C'odnadatta (Prof. Osborn), spores dark purple, 9 to 12x8 to 10 4 /x. 



353. Podaxon Muclleri, Henning. Lloyd, Lycop. of Austr., p. 5. We 

 have a specimen collected at Kurrawang, Western Australia, by Mrs. A. F. 

 Cleland in 1918. Spores near subspherical, yellowish, 105 to 12 x 85 to 104 ^. 



354. Podaxon anomalum, Lloyd, Mycol. Notes, No. 64, September, 1920, 

 p. 992, fig. 1776. We sent C. G. Lloyd half of the single specimen collected, 

 and he has kindly described and figured it as above (No. 549). Unfortunately 

 we have not noted the locality, which was probably the Murray River area 

 between the North-west Bend and Overland Corner, but may have been Western 

 New South Wales. Lloyd in his notes says that this really belongs to a new 

 genus, intermediate between Podaxon and Secotium. "It is a Secotium in 

 general appearance, but Secotium does not have powdery gleba. The dehiscence 

 cannot be told surely from the specimen, but the peridium is soft and fragile, 

 and seems to flake off in the manner that Cauloglossnm is said to dehisce. This 

 is entirely at variance with any Podaxon. The columella, thick at the base, 

 rapidly tapers and does not reach the apex of the peridium. This is another 

 feature of which I know no similar case. The gleba is light brown, floccose, 

 powdery. The microscope resolves it into pale yellow, globose or elliptical, 

 smooth spores, 10 to 12 x 12 to 14 fi, which are mixed with abundant hyaline 

 hyphal fragments, apparently the remains of the basidia. It does not have true 

 capillitium. We place it provisionally in Podaxon on account of the gleba nature, 

 and Podaxon is one of the few puff-ball genera in which basidial remains are 

 found in the gleba." — Lloyd. We note that the spores are thick-walled. 



Secotium. 



355. Secotium melanosporum, Berk. Cooke, Handb. Austr. Fungi, No. 

 1220 (Western Australia). We have collected this rare species in one locality 

 only, viz., Monarto South, in South Australia, though in several places within 

 a mile of each other. The identification has been confirmed by Lloyd (No. 734). 

 Lloyd, in his Lycoperdaceae of Australia, states that the only specimen known 

 then was the type collected by Drummond in the Swan River Settlement "over 

 sixty years ago." We have described our specimens as follows : — At first conico- 

 campanulate, the pileus then expanding and convex up to 2^ inches in diameter, 

 bearing a general close resemblance to a common mushroom. The upper-surface 

 pallid whitish and a little fibrously striate; the substance, up to | inch thick, 

 composed of small irregular cells, 1^ to 4 mm. in diameter, the walls pale greyish 

 lined with olive. A fine whitish veil covers the under-surface of the cap, which 

 when removed or ruptured shows the shrunken walls of the cells of the substance 

 which are in places elongated in lines, suggesting the incipience of gill formation, 

 the depth of these cells being very shallow. A thin film of tissue covers the 

 cellular hymenial area, this being thickest over the stem. The stem itself is 

 up to 3^ inches high and 4^ inch in diameter in the middle, solid, attenuated 

 upwards, the root rounded, slightly bulbous, pallid whitish, fibrously striate, 

 extending through the cap to the upper-surface. The flesh turns reddish when 

 cut. Hymenial area, Bistre (pi. 29). Spores purplish-brown, oval with an 



