FUNGI. 



357 



stemonitis, only more delicate still both in form and color, are 

 not infrequent. They are everywhere in the woodland — on leaves 

 and sticks that lie close upon the ground, upon a thousand hum- 

 hlest things. Such forms are the Comatrichm, Arcyrice,, Cribrarice,, 

 etc. The arcyrias form their 

 spores and the net which con- 

 tains them all in a delicate 

 spherical or obconical recepta- 

 cle.* At maturity the upper 

 part breaks away and the elas- 

 ticity of the contained struct- 

 ures forces them out as a most 

 airy puff, from which the spores 

 may be driven by the wind while 

 the base of the original enve- 

 lope remains as an empty cup. 

 Sometimes the entire structure 

 is mounted upon a slender, 

 polished stalk of appreciable 

 length, and the whole colony of 

 sporangia stand as tiny salvers 

 whose shadowy contents rise 

 like incense-wreaths. To find a 

 rosy field of Arcyria puniceum, 

 to safely box it and lodge it in 

 one's collection, is enough to 

 give a man joy, even of the 

 esthetic sort, from Sunday to 

 Sunday. The tints in all these 

 fruits are just right : they are 

 the grays, the olives, the brick-reds, the browns, and yellows. 



Of these that produce their fruit thus in spherical or cup- 

 shaped receptacles, some are giants among the rest. One, very 

 common, imitates the Lycoperdons, or puff-balls, and that so 

 closely as to have deceived the botanists themselves. It has 

 been named Lycoperdon again and again, and even carried over 

 the whole tribe with which it is related into the order Gastero- 

 mycetes — the puff-ball order. The student finds a row of little 

 spheres, ashy or rosy in color, about as large as bullets, resting 

 side by side on some bit of rotten stuff in the woods, and forth- 

 with thinks about Lycoperdon pusillum, or possibly some new 

 species, and not until after much investigation and groping, and 

 probably some outside assistance, does he at length reach the " true 

 inwardness " of Lycogala. 



* Stemonitis also has at one time in its development a delicate peridium around each 

 sporangium. This, however, soon vanishes. 



Fig. 5.— Spores and Elaters of Trichia 

 chrysosperha. Highly magnified. 



