by the Agency of Insects . 215 
We thus see that insects are normally the disseminators of 
the spores of Phallus impudicus , and this fact serves to explain 
not only the peculiar liquefaction of the hymenium, but many 
other points in its structure, and furnishes, indeed, the clue to 
the curious and often bizarre forms of other phalloids, which 
have so often puzzled botanists to explain. 
3, The Coprini. 
It seems very probable that most or all of those fungi whose 
spores are ultimately contained in a slimy or liquid substance 
of dark colour, especially if of foetid odour, and which is freely 
accessible, will be found to have their spores largely transported 
by the agency of insects. 
We find, for instance, in the genus Coprinus many examples 
fulfilling these conditions. There are between thirty and forty 
British species of Coprini 1 , and a brief consideration of their 
leading characters will not be without interest. The hymeno- 
phore, which may vary in height from about half an inch to six 
or seven inches, is often very delicate and fugacious, and may 
in some cases go through all its stages and disappear within 
twenty-four hours or less. The stem is almost invariably 
white, and the external surface of the pileus is usually whitish, 
slate-coloured or brown, sometimes with a reddish tinge, and 
generally darkens in association with the change in colour of the 
gills, which in the majority of cases are at first white or pale 
or pinkish, but ultimately become almost or quite black. In 
some cases the pileus is conspicuous by its colouring, as in 
Coprinus picaceus , in which the outer surface is pied with white 
patches on a dark ground. The great character, however, of 
the Coprini is that the hymenial surface deliquesces, the spores 
becoming immersed in an inky -black fluid, often exceedingly 
foetid 2 . As is the rule in the Agaricini, the hymenium is in- 
1 Cooke, Handbook Brit. Fung. vol. i, p. 160, et seq. 1871 ; Illustrations Brit. 
Fung. Nos. xlii-xliv. Pis. 658-687, 1886. 
2 Dr. Haas found glucose in the deliquescing fluid of some species of Coprini . 
Op. cit. p. 43. 
Q 
