HYDNEAE. 145 



FAM. IV. 



HYDNEAE. 



In the preceding families the hymenium was perfectly- 

 even in the majority of species, with just an indication of 

 rugosity in the highest genera of the Thelephoreae, as 

 Craterellns, Cladoderris, and. Beccaria; the last is an exotic 

 genus, and forms a transition from the Thelephoreae to the 

 Hydneae, agreeing with the former in habit and the structure 

 of the sporophore, with the latter in the configuration of the 

 hymenium, which is furnished with radiating ridges that 

 are more or less toothed or nodulose at the edge, shadowing 

 the type of structure that is more highly developed in Irpex, 

 where the teeth spring from ridges or folds of the hymenium. 



In the Hydneae the hymenium is, from the earliest stage 

 of its development, uneven, the inequalities — on which the 

 true hymenial surface is produced — taking the form of spine 

 or wart-like prominences ; in the simpler genera nearest to 

 the Thelephoreae, these prominences take the form of 

 crowded or scattered granules or hemispherical prominences 

 of small size, the whole fungus being a thin resupinate film 

 covered on its free surface with these structures, whereas in 

 the higher genera the projections of the surface take the 

 form of blunt tooth-like outgrt)wths, as in Irpex and Badulvm, 

 whereas in Hydnum, which illustrates the highest phase of 

 development to which the Hydneae have attained, the out- 

 growths from the sporophore which constitute the hymeno- 

 phore appear as elongated, tapering, pointed spines. It is in 

 this genus also that the hymenophore attains its highest 

 development, passing from the simpler, membranaceous, 

 resupinate forms to the pileate condition, supported on a 

 central stem. A peculiar feature in some of the simpler 

 genera consists in the fact that the warts are more or less 

 excavated or hollowed at the tip, as in Orandinia, Poroihelium, 

 and even in some of the simple resupinate species of Hydnum, 



VOL. I. L 



