OBSERVATIONS ON PEZIZA. 
135 
We have now briefly noticed all the features which have to be 
taken into account in the determination of Peziza. From the 
comparison of these an opinion has to be derived. It is not one 
character alone, however valuable, which should guide a determina- 
tion, but a comparison of all, and a decision in favour of the pre- 
ponderance. Diagnoses of species in which no attention is given 
to the hymenium, and especially to the sporidia, are entirely 
valueless ; so also are those in which external features are ignored, 
and the form of the sporidia alone invested with a specific value. 
Species, as well as genera, and genera as well as species, should 
follow an uniform principle in their construction. It can only be 
the source of endless confusion to give undue prominence to any 
single organ to the prejudice of others. This results in distorted 
caricatures, and not faithful sketches, in the delineation of Pezizoid 
character. The recognition of the fact that “in large genera the 
species are apt to be closely and equally allied together, forming 
little clusters round certain other species ” should not be interpreted 
as an indication of the imperfection of the genus, and the necessity 
for splitting it up into a string of minor genera, based on slight 
and insufficient characters. The present age promises to be better 
known in the future by its failures than by its successes in myco- 
logical classification. This is mainly due to a lack of a philoso- 
phical appreciation of the principles on which all scientific order is 
based. 
By some such process as the comparison of its salient features, 
as we have indicated, with those of its allies, have the species 
already figured in the genus Peziza come into existence. It has 
been very rarely an exceptionally strong development of a single 
important character, but in the majority of instances a number of 
small differences, each insufficient in itself, which has determined a 
species. Wherever species are closely allied, and present only 
such differences as can be ascertained by careful and minute com- 
parison, a far greater responsibility rests with the author of a new 
specific name, than in small genera where the species are few and 
distinct. In such cases it would be unjust and unfair to an 
anthor to affirm that he had multiplied species without just 
cause, whereas the failure would most probably lie with the critic, 
unaccustomed to such comparisons, or lacking in experience to 
temper his judgment with discretion. Manifestly it is a difficult 
task to appreciate the relation of species with species in a genus 
consisting perhaps of no less than a thousand. This difficulty is 
intensified in family clusters, where a number of species are closely 
ranged around a central type. How much this is the case with 
Peziza may be estimated by analysing one or two of its groups of 
species. 
Let us, for example, select as a most marked and characteristic 
group, that which, in our final arrangement of species, we have 
denominated as the sub-genus Scutellinia. Here it is manifestly 
the old species Peziza scutelldta of Linnaeus, which is the centre of 
