Specimens in our Collection. 
West Indies, St. Kitts, Wm. Lunt. a fine collection. 
Mexico, Sanderson specimens from Prof. T. H. McBride. 
Brazil, Rev. Johann Rick. 
Ecuador, G. Lagerheim. 
The plants received from Prof. Tagerheim and Rev. Rick are 
much larger than those from the West Indies and are not globose. 
The peridium is also separable (as the genus Tasiosphaera) but I 
think this is due to hard usage in the mails. 
287—LASIOSPHAERA FENZLII. 
(Plate 19.) 
This is the “giant puff-ball ” of India, the only species known 
to me that competes in size with the “giant-puff-ball” of the remainder 
of the world. Calvatia gigantea.* 
The main character on which the genus Tasiosphaera rests is 
the caducous peridium. When the puff-ball ripens, the peridium loosens 
and falls away, and a mass of compact gleba remains, which rolls over 
the ground dispersing the spores. Such a mass was picked up thirty 
odd years ago on the voyage of the “ Novara,” country unknown, but 
supposed to be India. It was described in the “ Reise der Novara” 
as Tasiosphaera Fenzlii,t and the specimen preserved in the Hofmuseum 
of Vienna. + 
Not another specimen has since been received in Europe until 
last summer when I received at Paris fine specimens from Hugh F. 
MacMillan, Ceylon and also Geo. H. Cave, British India. These 
specimens presented every stage from young specimens with the peri¬ 
dium attached, to old ones that had lost their peridia and were only a 
mass of gleba. 
The peridium of the plant is double, both the exoperidium and 
the endoperidium being thin, the former peeling away from the inner 
peridium in patches as shown in the plate, and finally they both fall 
away leaving the spore mass. The inner peridium is very thin and 
papery, exactly the same nature as the inner peridium of the genus 
Hypobleina. It is of a rich, chocolate brown color. The gleba is 
compact, homogeneous, and consists of long, branched, intertwined 
threads, mixed with globose, rough, spores 5-6 mic. in diameter. It is 
of the same nature and has the same spores as that of Tanopila bicolor, 
but the color is not so reddish being rather a purplish umber.(§) 
* The only other I have found mentioned is “ Tyeoperdon horrendum mihi” (Bull. Soc. 
Moscow 45-182), but I do not know where “ mihi ” published it, if he ever did, and it is probable 
from his incidental mention that it is Calvatia gigantea. The “ mihi ” writers are now mostly 
memories of the past, for the idea that a man owns a species because he describes it, was too pre¬ 
posterous to persist. The present system of attaching personal names to the names of plants, is 
however, a direct outgrowth from it, and its legitimate offspring 
fThe generic name Eriosphaera, which occurs in Saccardo was the original Mss. name, not 
published but changed to Tasiosphaera when it was found that Eriosphaera was preoccupied. 
J I am indebted to Dr. A. Zahlbruckner of the Museum for a very liberal sample of the type 
gleba mass. 
(§) Statement has been recently made that the plant is the same as the giant puff-ball of 
Europe but as the two plants have neither the same spores, gleba colors, nor peridia I am not 
^strongly impressed with the truth of it and think the author was guessing. 
191 
