26 Mas see. — A Monograph of 
directly or indirectly through the Lycoperdaceae, and that 
they may therefore be deduced phylogenetically from the 
Hymenogastreae, is a necessary conclusion from the account 
which has been given of them 1 .’ If the Hymenogastreae are 
accepted as the primitive stock of the Gastromycetes, it might 
not be considered unreasonable to seek for their ancestors 
amongst groups of fungi possessing the same marked pecu- 
liarity of being subterranean in habit, and the order that 
naturally suggests itself in this particular is the Tuberaceae, 
the morphology of which up to a certain point is also identical 
with that of the Hymenogastreae. There is the same thick, 
comparatively undifferentiated, indehiscent peridium, com- 
pletely enclosing the gleba broken up into numerous sinuous 
cavities by the tramal plates, which are continuous with the 
inner surface of the peridium, the same very large, warted or 
spinulose, coloured spores, — but the spores are produced in 
asci, unmistakably so in typical species. It has been shown 
by Tulasne 2 , that the hy menial elements, more especially the 
asci, are quite as inconstant in shape, size, and number of con- 
tained spores, in the Tuberaceae, as the basidia are in the 
Hymenogastreae ; it is not unusual to meet with asci contain- 
ing from one to four spores respectively in the same species of 
Tuber , and the same is true of other genera. Tulasne has 
removed the genus Elaphomyces from the Tuberaceae, and 
established for its reception a new order, Elaphomycei, which 
he considers as intermediate between the Tuberaceae and the 
Gastromycetes, inasmuch as the genus embodies certain im- 
portant features characteristic of each ; agreeing with the 
former in having the spores produced in asci, and absence of a 
thickened sterile basal portion of the peridium ; and with the 
latter in the spores when mature forming a powdery mass, and 
mixed with a capillitium. ‘ Elaphomycetes Tuberaceis genu- 
inis quoad fructificationem analogi, structura morphisque 
floccoso-pulveracea sicca ab eis toto coelo dififerunt, et ad 
Lycoperdeos basidiosporas accedunt, quapropter fungos utri- 
1 1. c. p. 337- 
2 Fung. Hypog. p. ioi. 
