To Miles Berkeley   19 September 1881

19/9/81.

Allow me, venerable Sir, to send you a few specimens of a fungus, which seems to me to constitute an entirely new genus near Elaphomyces.

It was found 3-4 inches under ground. It varies from the size of a large walnut to that of a hazelnut. As you will see the exterior integument is crustlike and perfectly-closed, nor are any rootlets developed. The large solid central mass is granular under the microscope and emits millions of the most delicate threads, more slender than those of any spider web, along which in incaculable vastness of number the ovate spores are arranged. As you will notice the inner mass is by 3 or 4 dissepiments connected with the outer integument, thus the sporiferous peripheric space being loculated. So far as the mycologic works in my own library give me information, I find nothing whatever of generic approach. However my time in life has been so much taken up (apart from professional & departmental duties) with the study of all sorts of phanerogamous plants, that I may be quite wrong in my assuming this fung to be novel.¹ You do not like to be any more troubled, still in an exceptional case like this, you may as the grandmaster in mycology give me your opinion. I derived the name² from Potorous, that given by Desmarest to the genus of Kangaroo-rats, these animals feasting on this fung.

I had but few specimens and sent some to Dr Cooke.³

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

Elaphomyces