The second sub-family contains the coniospermous puff-balls, and includes two orders, in which the most readily distinguishable feature is the cellular condition of the entire plant, in its earlier stages, in the _Trichogastres_, and the gelatinous condition of the early state of the _Myxogastres_. Both are ultimately resolved internally into a dusty mass of threads and spores. In the former, the peridium is either single or double, occasionally borne on a stem, but usually sessile. In _Geaster_, the "starry puff-balls," the outer peridium divides into several lobes, which fall back in a stellate manner, and expose the inner peridium, like a ball in the centre. In _Polysaccum_, the interior is divided into numerous cells, filled with secondary peridia. The mode of spore-production has already been alluded to in our remarks on _Lycoperdon_. All the species are large, as compared with those of the following sub-family, and one species of _Lycoperdon_ attains an enormous size. One specimen recorded in the "Gardener's Chronicle" was three feet four inches in circumference, and weighed nearly ten pounds. In the _Myxogastres_, the early stage has been the subject of much controversy. The gelatinous condition presents phenomena so unlike anything previously recorded in plants, that one learned professor[I] did not hesitate to propose their exclusion from the vegetable, and recognition in the animal, kingdom as associates of the Gregarines. When mature, the spores and threads so much resemble those of the _Trichogastres_, and the little plants themselves are so veritably miniature puff-balls, that the theory of their animal nature did not meet with a ready acceptance, and is now virtually abandoned. The characters of the family we have thus briefly reviewed are tersely stated, as-- _Hymenium more or less permanently concealed, consisting in most cases of closely-packed cells, of which the fertile ones bear naked spores on distinct spicules, exposed only by the rupture or decay of the investing coat or peridium_ = GASTEROMYCETES. [Illustration: FIG. 38.--_Scleroderma vulgare_, Fr.] [Illustration: FIG. 39.--_Ceuthospora phacidioides_ (Greville).]