1896.] Botany. 219 



a paper published in Memoires couronnes de VAcadcmie de Belgique, 

 1894 by Ch. Bommer. I have not seen the original paper, but as 

 Ferry gives quite a lengthy account of it and quotes the most 

 essential parts there seems to he sufficient basis for some remarks. 



The fungi under consideration are Mylitta australis Berk, and Poly- 

 porus mylittce Cooke and Massee. The former is a large irregularly 

 spherical hypogeous fungous growth found in Australia and Van 

 Diemans' Land and called by the inhabitants " native bread." It was 

 first described by Berkeley in Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist, 1839 and 

 referred to Mylitta, a doubtful genus established by Fries upon what 

 is now known to be a gall. Berkeley says he found no spores but 

 noticed that the ends of some of the hyphie were swollen. No one 

 seems to have examined the fungus for some time after Berkeley de- 

 scribed it. According to Ferry, Tulasne regarded it as a mycelial for- 

 mation analagous to Pietra fungifera of Battara and older writers, 

 which is now known to be the sclerotium stage of Polyporus tuberaster 

 Ft. Later Cooke and Massee 3 referring to the plant incidentally call 

 it a sclerotium and Saccardo 4 who examined it recently, says he ob- 

 served spores (?) which were globose, smooth, hyaline, plainly nucleate 

 and 14-15/i. in diameter. Such in brief was the knowledge of the 

 plant before the appearance of the paper under discussion. 



The latter plant Polyporus mylittce C. & M. (fig. 1) was first described 

 in Grevillea l.c. It is a short stipitate plant with a tough pulviuate 

 pileus about 10 cm. broad, found growing on Mylitta australis in south- 

 ern Australia. The authors say in a note ; " A most interesting pro- 

 duction, undoubtedly the ultimate development of the sclerotium long 

 known as Mylitta australis Berk." 



A year later Saccardo (1. c.) published a slightly different form of the 

 same fungus under the same name. After the description he adds: 

 "Growing on M itia aust '- from which it ipj.t-ar-t > originate. The 

 texture of the Polyporus and of Mylitta are about the same. They are 

 formed of intertwining filaments with frequent globose swellings consti- 

 tuting a soft or suberose white mass. It is very probable, therefore that 

 Mylitta i> the sclerotium form of the Polyporus and probably bears the 

 same relation to the Polyporus that Ceriomyces bears to Polyporus 

 biennis (Bull.) Fr." 



Keferring now to Bommer's paper we shall give the essential 

 parts of Ferry's summary and translate the important parts of the 

 quotations from the author. Ferry first gives an account of Mylitta 

 australis as observed by Bommer. 

 •Cooke and Massee. Grev., 21 : 37. Dec., 1892. 



* Saccardo. Hedw., 32 : 56. March and April, 1893. 



