PEZIZA COCCINEA
Six,—Letters gratefully received from some of your readers, as well as Mr. Page's disclosure of his beneficent intention, shows that this exquisite little fungus, though shy and capricious in its favours, is not so rare as to excuse writers on the English countryside for not even giving it a name. Mr. Bates' list seems to miss the point of my question, for none of his names has won an established, or even a momentary, place in literature. As to his statement that it is now more properly called Geopyxis, this only showc that it has suffered from the Botanists a worse ignominy than neglect. Peziza has, at any rate for its first part, justification enough, Iriza (penis) being said to have meant a stalkless fungus, and most " red-cups " being, if my memory is correct, without stalk. The prefix in the " more proper " name requires that wyEis (pyxis) should have its Greek sense of a vessel of box-wood, and as the fungus does not spring from the earth, as the prefix should imply, and is not made of box-wood, no name
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