CHAPTER V.— COMPARATIVE REVIEW.—BASIDIOMYCETES. 337 
and observed in a few days the first beginnings of a mycelium make their appearance 
exactly on the spots which had been sown, and on the ninth day the first commence- 
ments of the compound sporophores, which reached their normal development and 
maturity between that and the twentieth day. But even here the possibility of 
parasitism is not absolutely excluded. 
A notice of Sautermeister! to the effect that Exidia recisa may also have 
ascocarps in old and shrivelled compound sporophores has never been confirmed, and 
must have been founded on the settlement of a species of Ascomycete in old plants 
belonging to the Tremellineae. 
Section XCIV. If we cast a glance backward at sections LXXIV to XCIII, we 
shall see that we must assume a direct affinity or phylogenetic connection throughout the 
whole assemblage of the Basidiomycetes. The course of development is the same in 
its main features wherever it has been ascertained. The organs which have been desig- 
nated by the same name in the foregoing account, especially the basidia and basidio- 
spores, must from the data before us be regarded as sfrzctly homologous. The Hymeno- 
mycetes on the one side and the Gastromycetes on the other are evidently two 
closely connected series. They are in general very different from one another, and 
the difference lies chiefly in their compound sporophores, but they sometimes also 
approach each other very nearly. Gautieria, and we may say also some forms of 
Secotium, are evident connecting links between the groups of the Hymenogastreae 
and Polyporeae. Gautieria which has all the characters of the Hymenogastreae, 
but has its chambers open and covered with no peridium, may be compared 
to a curled Merulius; the question naturally arises, whether the interior chambers 
have been formed by differentiation or in some way directly corresponding to this 
comparison. 
If we could attribute a decisive value to the habit of the plants, we should dwell 
upon the great resemblance between the stalked Hymenogastreae, like Secotium 
erythrocephalum (Fig. 144) and a veiled Boletus, or still more perhaps that of 
Polyplocium ? to the same species, though Polyplocium is too little known in its 
earlier states. But among the Polyporeae there is a remarkable form Polyporus 
volvatus, Pk., the Polyporus obvallatus of Berk. and Cook *, which considered by 
itself must be placed with or close to the Hymenogastreae. Its sporophore, which 
lives in the bark of trees, is a hollow spherical body flattened at the poles and about 
the size of a hazel-nut, with a thick closed wall of leathery texture; its interior surface 
is covered with the hymenium of a Polyporus on the part next the substratum and 
is sterile on the opposite side. 
That all the groups of the Gastromycetes converge towards the Hymenogastreae 
directly or indirectly through the Lycoperdaceae, and that they may therefore be de- 
duced phylogenetically from the Hymenogastreae, is a necessary conclusion from the 
account which has here been given of them. Corda and Tulasne long since drew 
attention to this connection, and to the affinity between the Hymenogastreae and 
the Hymenomycetes which has been brought into prominence in the preceding 
pages. 

1 Bot. Ztg. 1876, p. 819. 
2 See Berkeley in Hooker's Journ. II. 201, and Corda, Icon. VI. 
3 Ellis, North American Fungi, No, 307. 
[4] Zz 
