BRITISH FUNGI, 
329 
exude. The Common Puff-ball has a double peridium, the 
outer part peels off and leaves the inner entire. In the young 
state some Puff-balls make an excellent and wholesome dish, 
resembling sweetbreads in flavour : in age they delight mis- 
chievous boys, who love to puff the powder into each others’* 
eyes, and they perform a beneficent office towards those do- 
mestic insects — the bees — who, intoxicated by the fumes of a 
Puff-ball burnt under the hive, fall down in coma, and the 
honey may then be taken without the wholesale murder which 
is too often the cruel reward for their patient industry Our 
great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers were lighted to 
evening parties by these Puff-balls, according to Gferarde ; and 
they were also used for tinder by the succeeding generation. 
The Edible Puff-ball is Ly coper don giganteum ; it also acts 
as an anaesthetic, according to Berkeley, and may, in future 
years, be as useful as chloroform. 
A number of minute Fungi appearing on rotten wood in 
autumn and winter, some resembling rusty nails; others, 
minute pins, their heads bursting and giving forth red or yellow 
or grey powder ; and others, again, beads also dusty in age, 
succeed the Puff-balls in botanical order, all beautiful and 
interesting when closely examined. The Nidulariacei is the 
prettiest group in the family Gasteromycetes. The peridium is 
tough and woody, and opens at the top, giving the appearance of 
a cup the size of a child’s thimble, with packets of spores lying 
at the bottom, attached by an elastic thread, which jerks them 
out when ripe. The Gyathus stricitus I found in Somerset- 
shire, growing upon beech-mast ; it is hairy on the outside and 
beautifully striped within. The G. vernicosus was the produce 
of gardens about Edinburgh, where it adorned the box edges 
with its bell-shaped cups, and is known by the name Siller 
Cup; and the smaller species, Grucibulvm vulgare, was con- 
tributed from stubble fields in Shropshire. 
The third family of the Spore class is characterized by the 
whole mass being formed of dust, sometimes enclosed in a 
cover, sometimes naked ; it is called Conioniycetes. The Fungi 
of this class are chiefly parasites and epiphytes, growing as 
specks and blotches — white, orange, brown, red, or black — on 
dead twigs and leaves. One of this family, the Tilletia caries, 
attacks the grains of wheat, which it turns black, and it 
gives them an offensive odour ; flour made from the infected 
grain can only be used for gingerbread, as the condiments 
combined with it disguise the smell. The TJstilago segetum, 
another member of this family, attacks all cereals. The Red 
Cheese Mould belongs to the Goniomycetes, and has a fairer 
reputation. 
The Ryphomycetes , or Thread Fungi, constitute the fourth 
