branched organs under the skin; but they are glands, not air-tubes.

A somewhat obscure animal had been found at the Cape of Good Hope and elsewhere, which had been examined and named Peripatus, and was pronounced to be a worm. Not satisfied with previous investigations, Mr. Moseley and his lamented coadjutor, the late Dr. Willemoes Suhm, on their arrival at the Cape, competed in friendly rivalry for the first possession and examination of the animal. Peripatus was, however, scarce and hard to find. The lot fell to Mr. Moseley; his microscope was expeditiously applied, and for the first time in the annals of science the little detached branching air-tubes, with their pearly lustre and spiral structure, were seen by him, thus verifying a scientific conjecture founded on the theory of development. The chemists are, I believe, quite accustomed to similar gratifications, but they are sufficiently rare to make them extremely acceptable to biologists.

But to return to our fossil. On the appearance of Mr. Moseley's book, I was much struck with the apparent resemblance between Peripatus and Euphoberia, and, in reply to a communication on the subject, Mr. Moseley thus writes: "I should be very glad if it could be shown that any fossil Myriapods, as Euphoberia, were allied to Peripatus."

In conclusion, I may remark that Mr. Moseley's discovery, though a very gratifying one, goes but a little way towards ascertaining the developmental history of insects. Let it be fully conceded that Peripatus stands in ancestral relationship to class Insecta-let close affinity between Peripatus and Euphoberia also be conceded-that which seems to follow is the extreme antiquity of the form, even in the age of the coal-measures, when it coexisted with insects apparently as large and as well developed as they are now.

PECULIAR GROWTH OF AGARICUS IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT.

BY THE REV. H. H. HIGGINS, M.A.

Late in the autumn of 1878 my attention was called to a specimen of a Fungus of the mushroom tribe, allied to Agaricus (Collybia) fusipes of Bulliard, which had been found growing in an excavation under the floor of an ironfounder's shop in Lime Street. The hole, which was about sixteen inches square by thirty inches in depth, had been dug under a punch worked by steam, and was kept covered, except on rare occasions, by an iron plate, which totally excluded the light. Some time previously, the iron plate had been taken off, and the hole was described as being then nearly filled up by masses of the Fungus, which were cut away and removed. About six weeks after, the discovery of fresh masses of the

Fungus led to my being induced to visit and examine the spot. The following points seemed to me to be of sufficient interest to be worth recording.

The hole was dug in the ordinary rubble of old foundations. No portions of timber or wood appeared in the walls of the excavation; but such materials might have existed a few inches deep in the very miscellaneous matrix on which the Fungus was growing. The place felt warm, and was quite dry. The surfaces of the few plants still vegetating in the hole were thickly beaded with drops of water, and the whole substance of the Fungus was highly turgid with excessive moisture, but was quite firm, and in a vigorously growing condition. Each stem terminated upwards in a mushroomlike head (pileus), with gills (hymenium) developed on its under side; but instead of attaining its ordinary diameter of several inches, each pileus was but little broader than the stem on which it was growing. In every case the upper surface of the pileus, which, in this species, is ordinarily quite smooth, was thickly beset with small definitely-shaped

tubercles. The specimen brought to me consisted of ten or twelve stems growing in a closely tufted manner. I have much pleasure in exhibiting a coloured drawing of the Fungus, as it was when first taken from the hole, executed by Mr. J. Chard, of the Liverpool Museum. The specimen itself is now before you, and you perceive that it has shrunk excessively in drying. The bundles of fibrilla (hypha) constituting the stem, now stand out distinctly on the surface like cords or wires. They seem to appear, disappear, and reappear, like the withies in basket-work, or like the adventitious roots on the stem of a Tree-fern; or as may be seen in the strands of some patterns of telegraph cables. On close examination, however, and by the aid of cross sections, I find this curious appearance to be only the result of shrinking; for, on the convex side of a curved stem, the hyphæ are externally continuous from the base to the pileus.

As to the supply of pabulum, I conclude that some extensive deposit of vegetable and nitrogenous matter must have existed near the hole, favouring the growth of mycelium, the filaments of which had worked their way to the excavation. The comparatively warm temperature in which the Fungus was growing may account for a larger amount of watery vapour being present in the surrounding atmosphere; but how the plant contrived to appropriate so large a portion of it, and to condense it in drops upon its surface, whilst the sides and bottom of the hole were dry and almost dusty, I am not able to explain.

The great development of the stem, as compared with the dwindled pileus and hymenium, may be attributed to the absence of light. But by far the most interesting point was the occurrence on the upper surface of the pileus of tubercles, which were evidently continuations of the hyphae of the stem. In the ordinary course of growth the hyphæ would, at a certain stage, have left the vertical, and assumed the