34<5 
Burt . — The Development of 
Final stage. 
The main features of M. caninus , and the chief terms to be 
employed, may be brought to mind by a brief description of 
the more familiar mature stage. In this stage a fusiform- 
cylindrical stipe issues vertically upward through the ruptured 
apex of a fleshy bag, called the volva or peridium. The apex 
of the volva is usually near the surface of the ground. The 
white or reddish stipe is hollow, about 6 to 15 cm. long by 
1 cm. in diameter, and has a brittle wall of chambered struc- 
ture (Figs. 13 and 14). The partition-walls of these chambers 
consist of a modified hyphal tissue called pseudoparenchyma 
(£, Fig. 15). In the lower part of the stipe the chambers open 
outward, giving a perforated outer surface. 
At the time of elongation of the stipe the upper one-sixth 
to one-third of its length is covered by a closely adnate, 
greenish spore- mass called the gleba, which has in some 
degree the fetid odour characteristic of the Phalloideae. 
Deliquescence of the gleba, accompanied by the formation 
of sugars 1 i at once sets in, and the gleba soon drips away or 
is removed by flies and other insects 2 , thus exposing the 
spore-bearing (i. e. gleba-supporting) part of the stipe. This 
portion is more highly flesh-coloured than the portion below, 
and the chambers of its wall open inwards into the main 
central cavity of the stipe. 
The volva consists of three layers : a thin outer layer con- 
tinuous with the cortical layer of the mycelial strand ; a thin 
inner layer — the inner layer of the peridium — in the plane in 
which the volva splits away from the gleba at maturity ; and 
a broad middle layer, highly gelatinous in nature, and hence 
called the gelatinous layer of the volva. 
1 Rathay und Haas : Ueber rhalhts impudicus (L.) und einige Coprinus-Arten. 
Sitzungsb. d. Mathem.-Naturwiss. Akad. zu Wien, 1883, Bd. LXXXVII, 1. Abth. 
p. 18. 
2 Rathay und Haas, 1 . c. ; Fulton, T. W. : Dispersion of Spores of Fungi by 
Insects. Annals of Botany, Vol. iii, 1889, p. 207; Gerard, W. R., In Bulletin of 
Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. vii, 1880, p. 30. 
