2 
Another specimen, about 6^"^" in diameter, has no shreds on its 
rough, much wrinkled surface, but has a cylindrical stick, 7™™- in 
diameter, running centrally through its white mass, in the manner 
described by the above-mentioned authors, who consider such sticks 
as the remaining portions of the roots from which the tuckahoe is 
formed. No cellular tissue could be detected on or near the surface 
of this specimen; but sections from superficial portions of the cen- 
tral, cylindrical root and the contiguous white mass of tuckahoe dis- 
played the very same gradual merging of the cellular tissue of the 
woody root into the mass of tuckahoe as described above, this time, 
of course, in reversed, centrifugal order. 
The various stages of disintegration can also be seen in the in- 
terior portions of the root itself, for there are many places at which 
groups of cells, greatly varying in extent, have been partly or en- 
tirely destroyed, and replaced by the mass of tuckahoe. (Fig. 6, 
especially in the lower right-hand corner; also Fig. 7, three cells from 
r, Fig. 6, greatly enlarged.) 
These observations seem to prove that tuckahoe does present 
traces of plant-structure, and also that there is a merging of the cell- 
ular tissue of the coniferous root into the mass of tuckahoe ; and it 
is the structure of this latter substance itself that next attracts our 
attention. 
Froni the above quotations it appears that this mass is thought to 
be compact and without any structure, either vascular or granular. 
The microscopical examinations recorded in the Smithsonian Re- 
port (pages 698 and 699) do not throw any light on this question; 
they seem to have been made with the one end in view of proving 
the fungoid nature of tuckahoe. I find that any section of this mass 
demonstrates that it consists of countless, minute, white, granular 
bodies of varying size and most irregular shape. All these granules 
have rounded outlines, but some are globular, others oblong, either 
stout or slender, and most of them have short branches, rounded ex- 
crescences or tubercles, which give them a very odd appearance- 
Not only the mass of tuckahoe proper is formed of these grains, but 
they are found crowding the cavities of the wood-cells described 
above and figured in the plate, (See Figs, i, 5, 7 and 8.) 
Perhaps it was these bodies on which the following description 
was based (Smithsonian Report, page 698): "The body of the fungus 
[/. ^., tuckahoe] is composed of short irregularly-jointed threads of 
mycelium, somewhat tuberculated, which swell considerably on heat- 
ing with water." That these grains are not mycelium is evident from 
their very appearance, and still more so from their chemical compo- 
sition. Potassium hydrate easily dissolves them, while the real niy- 
celium, to be spoken of hereafter, remains nearly unchanged. They 
are also soluble in cuprammonia, causing a very copious precipitate 
of what I suppose to be pectate of copper. These characteristic 
pectin reactions* seem to leave no doubt that these granules consti- 
tute the bulk oi peciose of which, according to all chemical autliori- 
* Kabsch, in Foulsen's Bot. Micro-Chemistry, translated by Prof. V^ ""• 
Trelease (S. E. Cassino, 18S3). a book that cannot be too highly recommended to 
all students of histology. 
