April 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE BEECH MORELS OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. 



BY M. C. COOKE. 



These singular fungi have not been known many years to scientific 

 men, having been first brought under notice by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, 

 in the ' Transactions of the Linnean Society,' wherein he constituted a 

 new genus for their reception, under the name of Cyttaria, and described 

 two species, one collected by Bertero, in Chili, and afterwards by 

 C. Darwin, Esq., who also found the species which bears his name in 

 Tierra del Fuego, and which was the second species described in the 

 paper above-mentioned. These were all that were then known, and 

 they were, at the same time, ascertained to be common articles of food 

 in the countries producing them. Since this period the number of 

 species has been augmented, although now, as far as I am aware, it 

 only includes five representatives, the sixth being problematic. Exter- 

 nally, some of these have a resemblance to the morel, and like that 

 fungus are ascigerous, or bear their fruit enclosed in little elongated 

 sacs (asci). Their chief interest to readers of the Technologist lies in 

 their esculent qualities, and, hitherto, no collected account has been pub- 

 lished of the different species constituting the genus ; which must be my 

 apology for introducing more than usual of the botanical element into 

 this paper, which is devoted to a subject equally interesting to the 

 botanist and the economist. 



All the species hitherto found have occurred on beech trees, and with 

 but one exception, hereafter to be noticed, a different species of Cyttaria, 

 each one on a distinct species of beech. Their geographical limit is 

 confined within a narrow zone, restricted to the southern hemisphere. 

 The space enclosed between the parallels of 30 cleg, and fiO deg. south 

 latitude, includes all the localities in which they have hitherto been 



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