128 
FUNGUS-HUNTING IN SPRING. 
bark resembles that of young hawthorn, and has in parts 
somewhat of the rich tawny sheen of the hazel; but the 
pole is too large for these. It has not the purple undertone 
of the laburnum, and the trunk is too straight; for the 
laburnum loves to grow in undulating curves, wherefore when 
young it lends itself readily (note this, ye suburban gardeners) 
to the tying of fantastic knots and loops, which in their old 
age will be a sight curious to behold. The wood shows that 
it is not young oak, though the bark is similar to that of 
a sapling “ monarch of the forest.” At last, I have it. It is 
a mountain ash ! 
Of course I am merely putting into words the thoughts 
which passed swiftly through my mind, while gazing at the 
pole. Further comparison and the judgment of a friend 
“ weel acquent wi’ trees ” confirmed my conclusion ; but a 
more decisive, because impartial, confirmation was still to 
come. Examined at home, the black specks of our prize 
resolve themselves into irregular globes, called perithecia, 
whose interior is filled with colourless spindle-shaped spores. 
This, combined with the habitat on the branch of a tree, 
shows that we must look for our fungus among the species 
of the genus Bliabdospora. 
The first step towards its nearer determination was to 
make out the form and size of the perithecia, and here an 
unexpected difficulty presented itself; no two perithecia 
were alike; some round, some oblong ; at one time single, 
at another crowded; now obtuse at the summit, now acute ; 
here opening by a small round pore, there splitting with a 
long and gaping slit. These are the very points which we 
find in general to be helps in determining a species, but 
here everything is irregular. Then I look at the spores (or 
sporules), which by careful measurement are found to be 
about sixteen or seventeen thousandths of a millimetre long. 
It remains but to turn to that monument of Herculean 
labour, the “ Sylloge Fungorum Omnium” of Professor 
Saccardo. This great Italian mycologist, the professor of 
botany at the University of Padua, who stands head and 
shoulders above all the other mycologists of the age, has 
conferred upon his fellow-students a boon for which they 
can never be too thankful. In his Sylloge, he is collecting 
(for the work is not yet half finished) the descriptions of all 
known fungi, and our fungus fortunately belongs to one of 
the groups of which he has already treated. The perithecia, 
enclosing free spores, point it out as belonging to the Sphae- 
ropsideae, a distinct and well-marked class which is swallowed 
up, under the old Friesian system, by that olla podrida, the 
Coniomycetes. 
