CHAPTER V.—COMPARATIVE REVIEW.—GASTROMYCETES, 317 
G. fimbriatus, G. coliformis, and others its cells are delicate, and it becomes full of 
fissures soon after the peridium has opened, and unable to assist in the bending 
of the rays. In G. mammosus and, according to Tulasne, in G. rufescens on the 
contrary it has the same persistent hygroscopic qualities as in G. hygrometricus. 
3. The differences between the genera Batarrea and Podaxon and the typical 
Lycoperdaceae which have been hitherto under consideration are sufficiently striking to 
require a special description. The early stages of the development are not known in 
either of them. 
A half-ripe specimen of Batarrea Steveni from the south of Russia examined 
by myself was in shape a cushion-like body (Fig 147 a) with a regularly convex 
upper surface and a diameter of nearly seven centimetres. The vertical median 
section shows a structure, which may be roughly compared with that of a nearly ripe 
Geaster. An inner peridium shaped like the plano-convex blunt-edged pileus of an 
Agaric with an average thickness of one centimetre incloses the almost ripe gleba, 
which has a scleroderma-like structure, except that many of the stronger walls of 
the chambers run vertically from the upper to the lower surface ; isolated capillitium- 
threads occur amongst the spore-dust. The threads are short and obtusely fusiform 

FIG. 147. Batarrea Steveni, Fr. Vertical median longitudinal 
i aa young: i but with most of its spores already 
ripe. 6a mature specimen (in the latter the apex only and base of the 
stipe are depicted). # and % the outer, the inner peridium, g the 

gleba; the lines in the gleba show the position of the stronger FIG. 148. Batarrea Steveni, Fr. 
remains of the trama. One third the natural size, semi-diagrammati- Isolated threads of the capillitium, 
cally represented. magn. 390 times. 
and irregularly curved, and show at their extremities or on their sides evident traces of 
their former attachment; the inner surface of their thin membrane, smooth on the 
outer surface, has delicate brown spiral or annular thickenings, which Berkeley! 
was the first to describe (Fig. 148). The outer peridium is a stout membrane 
about 1 mm. in thickness, which lies everywhere close upon the upper surface 
of the inner peridium; its lower portion is a massive cushion-like body more than 
2 cm. thick in the middle. In later stages of the development an axile portion 
of the basal cushion beneath the centre of the inner peridium developes ultimately 
into an erect stipe which may be a foot in length and 1-1.5 cm. in thickness 
with scales on its upper rough and fissured surface, and carries the inner peri- 
dium up with it (Fig. 147 4). The apical portion of the outer peridium is torn 
from the basal by the elongation of the stipe, and remains hanging in shreds 
from the upper surface and margin of the inner peridium, while the basal portion 

1 Hooker's Journ. II, 1843. 
