286 Burt: Structure and 



The deeper tissue from which the basidia arise, consists of com- 

 pactly arranged, sharply outlined, even-walled, cylindric hyphae 



i 



and of innumerable minute conidial spores, which occupy the spaces 

 between the hyphae (Fig. 7). The hyphae are usually 3-5 }i 

 in diameter but with some slender branches (Fig. 8). Clamp con- 

 nections are sometimes, but not usually, present at the septa. 



The conidia are hyaline, even, about 2 x 1 }4 J* (Fig. 9). They 

 are present in abundance in the specimens which I have collected 

 during eight seasons in the widely separated localities, East Gal- 

 way and Floodwood, N. Y., and Ripton, Vt., but are most abun- 

 dant in comparison with the basidiospores in the large fructification 

 of Figs. 2 and 3 ; they are perhaps always produced by this species. 



It has been difficult to make out the mode of origin of the 



o 



conidia on account of their minute size and position between 

 crowded hyphae. I have found, however, that if thin sections, cut 

 free-hand, are stained in a saturated alcoholic solution of eosin and 

 then mounted in water and potassium hydrate after washing away 

 the superfluous eosin, the tissues of these sections will retain their 

 intense red color for half an hour or longer and may be dissociated 

 sufficiently for study by gentle pressure on the cover-glass. By 

 the examination of such preparations with a ^g--in. objective, the 

 conidia are seen to be formed in bead-like chains by the constric- 

 tion of the smaller hyphal branches (Figs. 10, 11). 



Reference is not often made to the production of a crop of 

 conidia in addition to the basidiospores regularly produced by a 

 toadstool, yet several instances are known in the Tremellaceae, 

 Agaricaceae and Polyporaceae and they do occur occasionally in 

 the Thelephoraceae, I find. They should not be regarded as en- 

 titling the present fungus to special generic rank. 



The genus Tremella has basidia longitudinally and cruciately 

 divided and subhymenial hyphae with the outer portion of the cell 

 wall indistinct through gelatinous modification ; the fructifications 

 as a whole are also distinctly gelatinous and even tremulous in wet 

 weather. The fungus under consideration can not therefore be a 

 Tremella; in fact its structural characters are such that it should 

 not be included in the Tremellaceae but in the Thelephoraceae, 

 provided the distortions are not merely monstrous growths of Col- 

 lybia dryophila itself — which I do not believe after microscopic 



