STEUCTUEE. 29 



Podaxinei. — 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 are borne in definite clusters on short pedicels in such of 

 the genera as have been examined.* 



Hypogcei. — 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 peridium. 

 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 Myxogastres. 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 Phalloidei by the genus Hysterangium. 



TRlCHOGASTBES.t — In their early stages the species contained in 

 this group are not gelatinous, as in the Myxogastres, but are rather 

 fleshy and firm. Very little has been added to our knowledge 

 of structure in this group since 1839 and 1842, when one of us 

 wrote to the following, effect : — If a young plant of Lycoperdon 

 ccelatum 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, 

 " Icones Fungorum," vol. vi. pi. vii. viii. 



* Tulasne, " Sur le Genre Secotium," in "Ann. des Sci. Nat." (1845), 3 me 

 ser. vol. iv. p. 169, plate 9. 



f Tulasne, L. E. and C, "De la Fructi6cation des Scleroderma comparee a 

 oclle des Lycoperdon et dea JBorlsta," in "Ann. des Sci. Nat." 1842, xvii. p. 5. 

 Tulasne, L. K.. and C. , "Sur les Genres Poly&accum et Geaster," in ' 'Ann. <lts 

 Sci. Nat." 1842', xviii. p. 129, pi. 5 and 6. 



