CLASSIFICATION. 67 
coat or peridium, which is at first pale, but ultimately becomes 
brown. Internally is at first a cream-coloured, then greenish, 
cellular mass, consisting of the sinuated hymenium and young 
spores, which at length, and when the spores are fully matured, 
become brownish and dusty, the hymenium being broken up 
into threads, and the spores become free. In earlier stages, 
and before the hymenium is ruptured, the spores have been 
found to harmonize with those of Hymenomycetes in their mode 
of production, since basidia are present surmounted each by 
four spicules, and each spicule normally surmounted by a 
spore.* Here is, therefore, a cellular hymenium bearing qua- 
ternary spores, but, instead of being exposed, this hymenium 
is wholly enclosed within an external sac or peridium, which 
is not ruptured until the spores are fully matured, and the 
bymenium is resolved into threads, together forming a pul- 
verulent mass. It must, however, be borne in mind, that in 
only some of the orders composing this family is the hymenium 
thus evanescent, in others being more or less permanent, and 
this has led naturally enough to the recognition of two sub- 
families, in one of which the hymenium is more or less per- 
manent, thus following the Hymenomycetous type ; and in the 
other, the hymenium is evanescent, and the dusty mass of spores 
tends more towards the Coniomycetes, this being characterized 
as the coniospermous (or dusty-spored) sub-family. 
The first sub-family includes, first of all, the Hypogei, or sub- 
terranean species. And here again it becomes necessary to re- 
mind the reader that all subterranean fungi are not included in 
this order, inasmuch as some, of which the truffle is an exam- 
ple, are sporidiiferous, developing their sporidia in asci. To 
these allusion must hereafter be made. In the Hypogei, the 
hymenium is permanent and convoluted, leaving numerous 
ininute irregular cavities, in which the spores are produced on 
* Berkeley, M. J., ‘‘On the Fructification of Lycoperdon, Phallus, and their 
Allied Genera,” in ‘‘ Ann. of Nat. Hist.” (1840), vol. iv. p. 155; ‘‘Ann. des 
Sci. Nat.” (1839), xii. p. 163. Tulasne, L. R, and C., ‘‘ De la Fructification des 
Scléroderma comparée a celle des Lycoperdon et des Bovista,” in ‘‘ Ann. des Sci. 
Nat.” 2™¢ sér. xvii p. 5. 
