114 MR. GEORGE MASSEE ON THE THELEPHOREZ. 
support when mature, and hence comes under the conception of 
a typical spore; but in Podisoma, which may be considered as a 
connecting-link between the Uredine® and the Tremellinez, the 
teleutospore is permanently fixed in the gelatinous mass, but is 
yet distinguished by its colour, although such colour is absent 
from the epispore, the only part usually coloured in typical 
spores ; whereas in the Tremellines the teleutospore is less differ- 
entiated, devoid of colour, permanently attached to the sporophore, 
and known as a basidium, each cell of which eventually elongates 
at its apex into a long tube homologous with the germ-tube (the 
so-called promycelium) emitted by a typical teleutospore ; these 
threads become attenuated towards the apex, at which point a 
reproductive cell is produced, and known as a spore in the 
Hymenomycetes, but which is, in reality, homologous with 
the spore produced by the germ-tube of the teleutospore in the 
Uredinee. 
In some of the Tremellineee the basidia differ from those of 
typical Hymenomycetes in being compound; the apical cell of a 
hypha destined to produce a basidium, after enlarging for some 
time, is segmented by septa into two or four cells exactly as in 
the formation of typical teleutospores; but even in the Tremel- 
lineæ there is a sequence to the simple (unicellular) basidium, 
the only type met with in the Hymenomycetes where yet further 
degeneration occurs, due to arrest of the homologues of the 
germ-tubes of teleutospores, which are reduced to two, or in most 
cases four minute spicules, henceforth known as sterigmata, each 
of which bears a spore at its apex. 
It may be urged, as telling against the above idea of the con- 
version of a teleutospore into a basidium, that in the former the 
septa are, as a rule, transverse to the axis of growth, whereas in 
the latter, when present, they are always parallel; yet in Triphrag- 
mium septa are developed in both directions, whereas in Dior- 
chidium, a genus belonging to the Uredines, the compound 
teleutospore consists of two cells separated by a vertical septum, 
and on germination each cell emits from its apex a long tapering 
germ-tube, the whole structure closely resembling the basidia 
met with in the genus Dacryomyces, belonging to the Tremellinez. 
In some species of Tremella, as shown by Tulasne*, the spores on 
germination produce still smaller spores of a second order; this 
again has its counterpart in the Uredinee. Finally, so long as 
* Ann. Sci. Nat. sér. V. vol. xv. p. 215. 
