162 
Mycologia 
this species is particularly good, and little cooking is required. 
The writer remembers coming suddenly some years ago upon four 
large giant puffballs grouped picturesquely about an old stump in 
a beecb grove near Ithaca, New York, and the pleasure he had, 
not only in gazing at them, but in getting them home and dis- 
tributing them in quarter sections to a number of his friends. 
Lycoperdon pyriforme Schaeff. 
Pear-Shaped Puffball 
Plate 127. X 1 
Peridium pear-shaped, 2.5-5 X 2-3 cm., dingy-white or brown- 
ish, with white, branching mycelium ; cortex of thin, minute, often 
persistent scales or granules, or of short, stout spinules ; inner 
peridium smooth, very thin, concolorous, opening apically ; subgleba 
small, white, rather compact, of minute cells; spores globose, 
smooth, greenish-yellow to brownish-olive, 3.5-4//.; capillitium of 
long, branched threads, which form a dense tuft in the center, 
columella present. 
This species occurs very commonly in dense clusters on decayed 
wood or humus throughout most of the United States and Canada, 
as well as in Europe and Asia. As a rule, the smaller puffballs 
are poorly flavored and this one is particularly so ; but it may be 
used when everything else is scarce. I have often eaten quite 
young specimens of this species late in the fall, flavoring them 
with bacon, parsley, onion, butter, salt, and pepper, and adding, if 
convenient, a few sporophores of the common mushroom. 
Sparassis Herbstii Peck 
Herbst’s Sparassis 
Plate 128. X 1 
Sporophore much branched, whitish inclining to creamy-yel- 
low, 10-12. 5 cm. high and 12. 5-15 cm. broad; branches numerous, 
thin, tough, moist, flattened, concrescent, dilated above and spatu- 
late or fan-shaped, often somewhat longitudinally curved or wavy, 
mostly uniformly colored, rarely with a few indistinct, nearly con- 
colorous, transverse zones near the broad entire apices; spores 
subglobose or broadly ellipsoid, 5-6.2 X 4-5 p - 
This species was originally described from specimens collected 
by Herbst at Trexlertown, Pa. The accompanying photograph is 
