The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio. 



149 



4. Iyycogala yellow, the smallest of all, reniform. 



5. Lycogala terrestrial, eaespitose, the color of melted 

 bronze. 



MUCILAGO. 



Mucilago is a kind of plant, which in its early stage greatly 

 resembles mucus or mucilage. It is protected by a single 

 cortex, which, after drying up, is by degrees wholly resolved 

 into a furfuraceous mass. In the first species, the substance 

 being intersected by very thin membranes, it is plainly sub- 

 divided into cells, while such is not the case in the remaining 

 species; but in all the species the substance is composed of 

 very minute seeds and of fine threads connected together, 

 and fastened as it were to a placenta. 



The species of Mucilago are — 



1 . Mucilago of summer time, rufescent, hemispheric, grow- 

 ing upon the trunks of trees. 



2. Mucilago crustaceous and white. 



3. Mucilago, white, branched, simulating the fibrous roots 

 of trees. 



4. Mucilago very small, club-shaped, white as milk, fur- 

 nished with a pedicel. 



5. Mucilago very small, with the shape of a little Agaric, 

 at first rufous, afterward cinereous. 



6. Mucilago very small, not crustaceous, white, of the size 

 and form of a grain of millet. 



7. Mucilago very small, crustaceous, white, the capsules 

 resembling a grain of millet, densely placed. 



8. Mucilago white, crustaceous, the capsules distant from 

 each other. 



9. Mucilago crustaceous, lead-colored, very neat, the cap- 

 sules small and close together. 



Iyinnseus, in the Systema Naturae (1735), established ten 

 genera of the Fungi. In three of these, Clathrus, I/ycoper- 

 don and Mucor, from time to time, he placed a few species of 

 Myxomycetes. Only two of these were originally described 

 by himself. 



In the first edition of the Species Plantarum (1753), I/in- 

 nseus enumerated four species of Myxomycetes, as follows — 



3 



