STRUCTURE. 29 
Popaxine1.—This is a small but very curious group of fungi, 
in which the peridium resembles a volva, which is more or less 
confluent with the surface of the pileus. They assume hymeno- 
mycetal forms, some of them looking like Agarics, Boleti, or 
species of Hydnum, with deformed gills, pores, or spines; in 
Montagnites, in fact, the gill structure is very distinct. The 
spores ure borne in definite clusters on short pedicels in such of 
the genera as have been examined.* 
Hyrccat.—These are subterranean puff-balls, in which some- 
times a distinct peridium is present; but in most cases it consists 
entirely of an external series of cells, continuous with the in- 
ternal structure, and cannot be correctly estimated as a peridinum. 
The hymenium is sinuous and convolute, bearing basidia with 
sterigmata and spores in the cavities. Sometimes the cavities are 
traversed by threads, as in the Dlyxogastres. The spores are in 
many instances beautifully echinulate, sometimes globose, at 
others elongated, and produced in such numbers as to lead to 
the belief that their development is successive on the spicules. 
When fully matured, the peridia are filled with a dusty mass 
of spores, so that it is scarcely possible in this condition to gain 
any notion of the structure. This is, indeed, the case with 
nearly all Gasteromycetes. The hypogceous fungi are curiously 
connected with Phallordei by the genus Hysterangium. 
. TricuocasiRes.t —In their early stages the species contained in 
this group are not gelatinous, as in the Myzroyastres, but are rather 
fleshy and firm. Very little has been added to our knowledge 
of st*ucture in this group since 1839 and 1842, when one of us 
wrote to the following effect :—If a young plant of Lycoperdon 
celatum or L. gemmatum be cut through and examined with a 
common pocket lens, it will be found to consist of a fleshy mass, 
‘British Hypogceous Fungi,” in ‘Ann. Nat. Hist.” 1846, xviii. p. 74. Corda, 
“‘Teones Fungorum,” vol. vi. pl. vii. viii. 
* Tulasne, ‘‘Sur le Genre Secotium,” in ‘ Ann. des Sci. Nat.” (1845), 3™¢ 
wér, vol. iv. p. 169, plate 9. 
+ Tulasne, L. R. and C., ‘De Ja Fructification des Scleroderma comparée a 
celle des Lycoperdon et des Borista,” in “* Ann, des Sci. Nat.” 1842, xvii. p. 5. 
Tulasne, L. R. and C., ‘Sur les Genres Polysaccum et Geuster,’ in ‘ ‘Ann, des 
Sci. Nat.” 1842, xviii. p. 129, pl. 5 and 6. 
