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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 Excerpt:...because a well-meaning companion, exclaiming " Nothing but pratensis!" threw it away. If all that we have longed to portray had been executed! But, alas! who ever performed all they designed and desired? Order Gastebomycetes.1 Suborder Trichogastresl Plate XXIII. LYCOPERDON CCELATUM, Aom Embossed Puff-ball. Subgenus Ly/coperdon. Gen. Char. Peridium membranaceous, with an adnate subpersistent bark; within, furnished at the base with a spongy sterile stratum. Capillitium unequal. Spec. Char. Lycoperdon Cielatum. Peridium usually not more than from three to six inches across, occasionally much larger; collapsing above, obtuse, apex dehiscent, at length open and cup-shaped; barren stratum cellular; internal peridium distinct from the nearly free, collapsing capillitium. Spores yellowish olive-green. Remarkable for its spongy, blunt, obconic base, above which the cavity is sublenticular. In consequence of the simple orifice, the mass of flocci and spores does not fall out, but collapses, until, by decay, the upper part of the fungus is completely broken up; the odour is then very offensive. Not esculent. Lycoperdon Coilatum, Bulliard, Fries, Berkeley. Hab. Not common. Hayes, of small dimensions, on the open heath. In Devon, as large as Lycoperdon giganteum, in pasture ground. Bulliard's figures of this Puff-ball, so handsome when not advanced beyond maturity, are most excellent; they cannot admit of mistake. The peculiar outer coat of the peridium breaks into small polygonal portions, nearly regular in size and shape; these, by the continued expansion of the Puff-ball, become isolated, continuing opake and densest in their central point, to which the marginal parts converge in ribs, so that each resembles a tiny flattened limpet-shell; the spaces betwe...