Notes. 
339 
Whether caoutchouc, resins, and tannins have any value, nutrient 
or otherwise, in the plant still remains to be determined. If they prove 
to be simply waste products, we shall be confronted with a peculiar 
method of dealing with waste matter which does not show much 
analogy to methods known at present. 
R. H. BIFFEN. 
Frank Smart Student, 
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. 
ON PEZIZA AURANTXA. — In March, 1896, the large pond 
in the Botanic Gardens, Cambridge, was emptied and cleaned, 
and large quantities of mud, chiefly the peculiar blue clay — gault 
— so common here, were removed from the bottom, together with 
plant-remains, such as the rhizomes and stems of water-lilies, 
Epilobium , Scirpus , Polygonum , &c. This mud was put into heaps 
in the garden under the shade of trees. At the same time a heap of 
similar blue clay, obtained during the digging for sewerage operations 
in the streets outside the gardens, was made near these heaps of 
pond-mud. 
In September we noticed the apparently sudden outburst of 
enormous numbers of brilliant orange-scarlet Peziza cups on the 
heaps from the pond, and these increased during October and 
November, forming one of the most magnificent crops of these Fungi 
I have ever seen. 
Examination show T ed the Peziza to be P. aurantia (Oed.), the cups, 
asci, and spores exhibiting the characters given in Phillips’ British 
Discomycetes, p. 56, as those of the typical species, and reference to 
Massee (Brit. Fungus-Flora, iv, p. 448), Lindau (Engler, Pflanzenfam., 
1 Th. 1 Abth. Lfg. 130, p. 187), and Winter (Rabenh., Die Pilze, 
B. Ill, p. 970) confirmed this, though these authors differ in the 
authorities cited for the name and synonyms. 
Brefeld has not succeeded in germinating the spores of this species, 
and so I made attempts to cultivate it, and hoped to get out its 
life-history, but in vain. 
It was quite easy to obtain the spores, though the majority of them 
appeared hardly ripe ; nevertheless, numerous attempts to germinate 
them failed. In hanging-drops of water, gelatine culture-media, agar, 
& c., they did not stir under any of the given conditions, nor could 
I get them to grow in test-tubes on what experience suggested were 
probably suitable media. 
A a 
