5240 ON THE CONVERSION OF ASCI INTO SPORES. 
in point of structure, they are really distinct forms of so many species. 
He does not seem, however, to believe that their spores are mere 
modifications of asci, though he is not prepared to assert that they 
indicate differences of sex. 
It is not our intention to offer any more positive opinion as to their 
nature, though the observations now adduced tend rather to show the 
convertibility of organs at first apparently so different. The facts, 
indeed, have already been adverted to in Morton’s ‘Cyclopædia of 
Agriculture,’ but they seem to us so interesting as not to be unworthy 
of attention, especially as the figures illustrative of them, with a single 
exception, have not been published. 
The species which have afforded the materials for the following 
remarks are more especially three; viz., Zympanis saligna, Tode; 
Spheria inquinans, Tode; and Hendersonia mutabilis, Berkeley and 
Broome. 
Tympanis saligna scarcely differs from a Lichen, except in the total 
absence of a crust, and consequently of gonidia. Its apothecia are at 
first closed, but at a later period of growth the fructifying dise or 
hymenium is exposed. On the same twig, in this instance of the 
_common Privet, some specimens exhibited all the characters of 
Tympanis, and others those of Diplodia. As long as the naked spores 
occurred only in specimens in which the disc was not expanded this 
caused no surprise, for nothing is more common than to find Spherie 
and Diplodie on the same matrix, which cannot be distinguished 
externally; but further examination exhibited the proper fructification 
of Diplodia in specimens with an open dise, a character quite at 
variance with that of the genus; and then the same hymenium was 
detected, producing rather large uniseptate naked spores, and broad 
elongated asci, exceeding them many times in length, and containing 
a multitude of minute oblong sporidia. Professor Fries, in a letter 
lately received, informs us that he has observed a similar fact in 
Hendersonia syringe. 
The circumstance of the constent or occasional occurrence of Uredo 
and Puccinia, Uredo and Aregma, Uredo and Xenodochus, or two species 
of the same genus, in the same spot, may be adduced as analogous; 
= but where there is no perithecium, the occurrence of two species on the 
. same spot of the same matrix is not matter of so much rupta, Hee 
suggestive of further consideration. 
