interior is filled with a
creamy white substance. This soon begins to disintegrate, and, as the
spores mature, changes to a mass of dusty brown spores and threads. When
the spores are ready for dissemination a small aperture appears in the
top of the peridium, through which they push their way outwards like a
little puff of smoke.

When young, and while the flesh is white throughout, the plant is
edible, although so small that it would take a quantity to make a good
dish. It is found chiefly in pastures in the autumn. Sometimes found
growing in company with Agaricus campestris. Of pleasant flavor when
young.

Fig. 11. Basidium and spores of a Lycoperdon highly magnified.

An English author states that inflammation of the throat and swelling of
the tongue have been known to ensue from eating some of the small
species of Lycoperdon in the raw state. It would be a wise precaution,
therefore, to cook all of the smaller species well before eating.

The genus Scleroderma is allied to Lycoperdon, but differs from it in
the absence of a capillitium, and in the thick indehiscent outer skin,
or peridium, which bursts irregularly on the maturity of the spore-mass,
the flocci adhering on all sides to the peridium and forming distinct
veins in the central mass.

The species Scleroderma _vulgare_ is very common in woods, and has
sometimes been mistaken for a form of Truffle. The plants are not very
attractive, and the odor is rank. They are subsessile and irregular in
shape, with a hard outer skin, the larger form of a yellowish or
greenish brown hue, and covered with large warts or scales, the smaller
very minutely warty, and of a darker brown hue. The internal mass is of
a bluish-black hue, threaded through with white or greyish flocci.
Spores dingy. The interior becomes pulverulent when the plant matures.
This species has been eaten in its young state when cooked, but the
flavor is by no means equal to that of the large puff-balls. It is
sometimes attacked by a fungus larger than itself, called Boletus
_parasiticus_, and this parasite is again attacked by a species of
Hypomyces, one of the genera of the Pyrenomycetes, which grows in
patches upon dead fungi.

PHALLOIDEAE OR PHALLACEAE.

The Phalloideae, sometimes called the "Stink-horn" fungi on account of
their foetid odor, are not numerous, the whole number of described
species being about eighty. The plants are watery, quick in growth, and
decay very rapidly. The