United States Species of Lycoperdon. 295 



and enough more taken for another meal. In this way it 

 may supply a small family for a week, but if all were 

 taken up and carried to the house at once, some of it 

 would spoil before it could be used. It is said when the 

 growing plant is cut or wounded the wounds heal or fill 

 up with new tissue. Cordier states that the old flesh of 

 this puff-ball is sometimes used for amadou and that the 

 spores are mixed with milk by the Finns to make a medi- 

 cine for calves afflicted with diarrhea. They are also 

 used, he says, in making various shades of brown paint. 

 The capillitium and spores of this and other species are 

 also said to have been used in stanching blood, and their 

 fumes as an anaesthetic. Fries says that there are two 

 forms of the species, one obconic, the other larger and 

 globose. All the specimens that I have seen were de- 

 pressed-globose, their vertical diameter being less than 

 their horizontal. As one correspondent expresses it, 

 they were very much like a large loaf of bread in shape 

 and in color. In all our specimens the sterile base is 

 very small in proportion to the size of the plant, so that 

 in the growing state the plant must have appeared quite 

 sessile. Probably the smaller obconic form has a more 

 distinct base, but I have seen no such specimens. Accord- 

 ing to Fries the species is so variable in size, shape, color 

 and the character of the surface that from these alone it 

 is difficult to distinguish it. All the specimens that I 

 have seen, however, are very distinct by their large size, 

 sessile character and smoothish irregularly rupturing 

 mature peridium. 



Lycoperdon c^latum Bull, 



Engraved PuS-ball. 



Large, 4'-8' broad, narrowed below into a short stout 

 stem-like base, white, covered with a rather thick mealy 

 or floccose coating which usually breaks up into warts 



