certainly its offensive odor would be quite sufficient to deter most
persons from attempting to test its edible qualities. Flies, however,
are very fond of the fluid, and consume it greedily and with impunity.
It is found in gardens and woods, its presence being detected several
rods away by the offensive odor. Specimens occur in which the color of
the cap is white or reddish.

In the allied genus _Mutinus_ the pileus is adnate and is not perforated
at the apex. Mutinus _caninus_ resembles _impudicus_ in form, but the
cap is continuous with, not free from the stem, and is crimson in color,
covered with a greenish-brown, odorless mucus. The stem is hollow,
whitish, tinted with a pale yellow or orange color. Not common.

_Genus Clathrus_ Mich. In this genus the receptacle is sessile, and
formed of an obovate globular net-work. At first wholly enclosed in a
volva which becomes torn at the apex and falls away, leaving a
calyx-like base at its point of contact with the stem.

FIG. 7.--=Clathrus cancellatus= Tourn.

UNWHOLESOME.

Receptacle bright vermillion or orange red, covered at first with a
greenish mucus which holds the colorless spores. Volva white or pale
fawn color. Odor strongly foetid.

MYXOMYCETES OR MYXOGASTERS.--"_Slime Fungi_."

In their early history the Myxomycetes, or "slime moulds," were classed
with the gasteromycetal fungi, and by Fries grouped as a sub-order of
the Gasteromycetes, under the name Myxogasters. From this connection
they were severed in 1833 by Link, who, recognizing certain distinctive
features which entitled them to consideration as an entirely separate
group, ranked the Myxogasters, as a separate order, under the title
_Myxomycetes_, _Slime moulds_. De Bary, in a monograph on the subject
written some years later, questioned the right of this group to the
place assigned it in the vegetable world, claiming that the Myxogasters
were as nearly related to the animal as to the vegetable kingdom, and
changing the name to Mycetozoa. Massee assailed this position in his
"Monograph of the Myxogasters," pointing out that De Bary derived his
reasons and deductions from the early or vegetative stage of the fungi,
without taking sufficiently into account the characteristics of the
later or reproductive stage in which the great disparity between these
organisms and those of the lower animals becomes apparent.

Dr. Rostafinski, the Polish botanist, and pupil of De Bary, adopts