44 
BRITISH DISCOMYCETES. 
“ England has more numerous and remarkable Discomycetes than 
Sweden,” will place this country on a par with most others in 
Europe. 
Not the least difficult task of those who essay to determine 
species is that of deciding what their predecessors have done. The 
scattered sources of information, the scanty specimens in public 
herbaria, the inadequacy of descriptions — 'Sufficient when the 
number of species were limited — and the absence of microscopic 
details, render it next to impossible to be quite sure what plants a 
given author had before him. To carefully weigh the evidence, 
and scrupulously compare details, are the only methods of avoiding 
the needless multiplication of species. 
Feziza leucomelas, Pers. 
Solitary ; cup white, stipitate ; stem rather thick, interruptedly 
sulcate; hyrnenium cinereous approaching black; asci cylindrical; 
sporidia 8, broadly elliptic, 1-guttulate, smooth, 20x13 /x ; para- 
physis filiform, clavate at the apices. 
Peziza leucomela, Pers. Myc. Eur., p. 219; Peziza macropus, 
Sturm FI. (in part), No. 31, t. 20, f. d. ; Peziza sulcata, Fckl. 
Syrnb., p. 330. 
Exs. Fckl. Fung. Rh., No. 2,085. 
On rocky clay bank. Feby. 
The cups are 1 to If inches broad, and the same high. It may 
easily be confounded with P. acetabulum , Linn., if regard be not 
had to the cinereous disc. 
Ashton Court, Clifton. Mr. Cedric Bucknall. 
Peziza ancilis, Pers . 
Substipitate, from the fleshy base of the cup being protracted 
downwards, fragile; externally white, thick branching veins below ; 
hyrnenium at first concave, becoming nearly plane, and wrinkled, 
greyish brown or purplish brown ; asci cylindrical, narrowed below ; 
sporidia 8, broadly fusiform, with an apiculus at each end, 3-guttu- 
late, brownish, 25-29 x 10-12 yu. ; paraphyses stout, a little 
enlarged at the brownish summits, indistinctly septate. 
Peziza ancilis, Pers. Myc. Eur. 219 ; Fries Sys. Myc., ii., 42 ; 
Cooke Mycog., 371, neither 229 nor 372 Relim. ; Peziza venosa , 
Weberb. Pilz., t. ii., fig. 1. 
On wet soil where fir-wood had stood. May, 1888. 
Cups 2 to 3 inches broad, 1 to If inch high. Our specimens 
were 1 to If inches broad, and § of an inch high. The remark- 
able sporidia distinguish this from its British allies. 
I am indebted to Prof. James W. H. Trail for specimens of this 
most interesting species. 
Dyce, near Aberdeen, N.B. 
Feziza umbirina, Bond. 
Ceespitose, sessile, large, at first hemispherical then expanded, 
margin persistently incurved, externally pruinose or granulose, 
