318 DIVISION II.—COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 
surrounds the lower extremity of the stipe like the volva of Amanita. Ultimately 
the wall of the inner peridium parts by a circular fissure beneath the margin, the 
upper piece falls away from the lower, which remains connected with the stipe, and 
from the gleba, and the spores are dispersed as dust. The tissue of Batarrea Steveni 
is entirely formed of stout hyphae with interstices which usually contain air; the 
hyphae in the wall of the hollow stipe are vertical and parallel to one another, as is 
the rule in most of the Hymenomycetes. There is no gelatinous tissue. In specimens 
with the outer peridium still closed the stipe is indicated only by the denser structure 
and darker colour of the tissue of the basal portion at the 
spot where the stipe subsequently originates. 
Queletia! of Fries seems to approach nearest to Batarrea, 
and perhaps also to Tulostoma. 
Podaxon has long-stalked ovoid or elongated peridia 
more than an inch in thickness, with a lateral wall of the 
thickness of a stout sheet of paper, which ultimately opens 
by lobes or scales and has the stout fibrillose structure of 
the stipe. The same structure is seen in the central column 
which traverses the peridium to the apex as a prolongation 
of the stipe. The space between the column and the wall 
is filled in the ripe compound sporophore with a connected 
capillitium, formed of long spiral tubes with a transverse wall 
only here and there. These tubes shoot out in numbers 
from the parallel peripheral hyphae of the central column, 
and run in the young plant into the outer wall of the peri- 
dium, which is torn away from them when the plant is 
matured. They are but little branched, and are rarely 
found with blind ends and these always on one side only. 
They are held firmiy together and form a net-work after 
maturity, being interlaced and wound round one another 
in every direction. They have rather thin yellow walls in 
Podaxon pistillaris and flatten into ribbons in the mature 
and dry condition. Some of them behave in the same way 
in P. carcinomatis, but others have thick yellowish brown 
membranes, which often have fine spiral striations and 
readily tear into spiral bands in the line of the striae, as 
: _ Berkeley? has recorded. See Fig. 149. The spaces between 
Fe Sie ora tabectthecpilitan the capillitium-threads are filled with spores and the dried 
Sous a De a remains of the membranes of the basidia, which have become 
times. more or less of a brown colour and partly adhere to the 
threads. Specimens of Podaxon pistillaris or an allied species, 
which were younger but had reached their full size*, showed the cavity of the peridium 
filled with a gleba containing an extremely large number of narrow and very sinuous 
chambers, very thin trama-plates, and a dense hymenial layer consisting entirely 
of stout four-spored basidia, The capillitium-threads were already discernible as broad 
but thin-walled hyphae passing on one side into the wall of the peridium, on the other 
into the columella, and in the gleba running, as in Lycoperdon, partly in the trama-plates, 
partly transversely through the chambers. If a statement of Corda * may be applied 
to this plant, the early development of the stalked peridium described above takes 
place inside a peridium externum which is subsequently broken through, just as in 


1 K. Vet. Acad. Förhandl. &c. Stockholm, 1871, No. 2. 
2 Hooker’s Journ. IV, p. 292. 
® In the Herbarium at Berlin, marked Schweinfurth, Iter 2, No. 275. 
* See Icon. VI, t. ITI, f. 44, and the text belonging to it. 
