39 
The article closes with some general observations, among which the 
following facts of general interest are brought out: 
(1) The use of entomogenous fungi in combatting injurious insects 
can not be of any injury to man except as they may infect useful insects 
sucli as the silk-worm. 
(2) No reliable means have yet been ascertained by which injurious 
insects can be combatted by Entomophthorece. The question is a more 
difficult one than has been supposed.—E. A. S. 
Massee, George. A Monograph of British Gastromycetes. Annals of 
Botany, November, 1889, Vol. IV., No. XIII, pp. 1-103. Four double 
plates. 
This monograph, wliicli may well be used as a hand-book for collectors 
of British fungi, is also of interest to American students of this group. 
The work contains a discussion of the group in general and of the 
families comprising it, which is much more readable than DeBary’s de¬ 
scription of the same as found in the translation of his Morphology and 
Biology of Fungi. There are also chapters on Affinities and Distribu¬ 
tion. A table is added giving the entire list of genera, distinguishing 
tlie British ones and noting the entire number of species and numbers 
of British species. 
Mr. Massee divides the Gastromycetes into the following families: 
Hymenogastrece , Sclerodermece, Nidulariece, Podaxinece , Lycoperdece, and 
Phalloidecc. The first corresponds, as regards the genera included, al¬ 
most exactly to Saccardo’s descriptions of the same. He includes the 
genus Sphanchnomyces under Hymenogaster , and says that a specimen 
of Pompholyx sapidum found near Chichester is evidently a species of 
Scleroderma . He differs from Saccardo in considering the Sclerodermece 
as one of the primary divisions of the Gastromycetes , and includes in it 
the following genera : Polygaster , Scleroderma , Polysaccum , Araclmion , 
Scoleciocarpus , Paurocotylis , Ciliciocarpus , Ly cogalop sis, Glishroderma. 
These are all included in Saccardo’s sub-family Sclerodermece of the Ly - 
coperdece , but do not comprise all of the genera that Saccardo assigns 
to the sub family; the others are placed in the Lycoperdece. 
Massee says that the Sclerodermece occupy an intermediate position 
between the Hymenogastrece and Lycoperdece , differing from the former 
in not being subterranean and from the latter in the absence of the 
capillitiuui and the iudeliiscent peridium. The genera included in the 
Nidulariece are the same as those of Saccardo’s Sylloge. 
In his table of genera he ranks the Podaxinece , which Saccardo re¬ 
gards as a sub-family of the Lycoperdece , as a family of equal value with 
the latter. It contains no British genera, however. His Lycoperdece , 
therefore, include considerably fewer genera than Saccardo’s family of 
the same name. He characterises it by the constant presence of a 
capillitium produced from the hyplue of the trama or peridium and re¬ 
maining mixed with the spores after the deliquesence of the tramal and 
bymenial elements. Winter’s family Tulastomei is placed as a genus 
