26o DIYISIOX II. COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 



pycnidia and similar formations, and we must not here enter further into the details of 

 the subject than the reader can at any time do for himself by comparing the examples 

 described in the preceding pages. But we may just observe that it is possible that 

 metamorphosis may be found in cases where it has been quite unsuspected. The 

 hymenium which has already been repeatedly described is found on the young stroma 

 of the Xylarieae, Claviceps, Epichloe, &c. either before or together with the first 

 appearance of the sporocarp, and gives off small cells, which in structure, origin, 

 and size might be spores (gonidia) or spermatia. There can be no doubt that they 

 are homologous in all these species. They were called gonidia in a previous page, 

 because they germinate in Claviceps and Epichloe, and in Poronia and Ustulina 

 among the Xylarieae ; but, as far as we know, they do not germinate in Xylaria a fact 

 which may be added here to complete our former observations on the genus. These 

 phenomena find their explanation in the hypothesis here proposed, and may 

 therefore be brought forward in support of it ; but it is obvious that the hypothesis 

 is not hereby made a certainty. 



In conclusion we must recur again to the objects which were included in page 242 

 under the name of doubtful spermatia. The word ' doubtful ' must still be repeated 

 of many of them, for we possess only brief accounts of them, and portions of these 

 are disputed. I confine myself therefore to the cases of Sordaria, Chaetomium, and 

 Sclerotinia, which we know more in detail through the labours of Zopf and Brefeld. 

 Here, according to these observers, the organs in question agree as much in their 

 characteristic development and structure as in their power of germination under the 

 conditions to which they were submitted, and they have no other function, as far as 

 could be ascertained, than that of spores. They are therefore organs whose 

 function is unknown to us. It is possible that they have no function at all ; at any 

 rate as they do not function as sexual or otherwise reproductive organs, they can 

 scarcely have any important duties to fulfil, for they are usually few and small ; and 

 if the case is otherwise in the specimens of Sclerotinia tuberosa grown by Brefeld, we 

 must not forget that in this instance the Fungus was growing under conditions quite 

 foreign to its usual circumstances. Having regard to the known facts and to the 

 analogies and homologies which may be applicable, there is the alternative proposed by 

 Zopf for the determination of these bodies, that they are either functionless spermatia, 

 or spores or gonidia not capable of germination. This is not a matter of indifference 

 in reference to the question of the homology. But gonidia without the power of 

 germination, according to all trustworthy data, are things which nothing but 

 extreme necessity can allow us to assume ; and in the case of the Chaetomieae, 

 where, according to Zopf, almost every cell of the mycelium may become a gemma 

 or gonidium with power of germination, and in Sclerotinia Fuckeliana with its 

 characteristic and highly reproductive gonidiophores, it would be an absurd thing 

 that such well-furnished appliances should be occupied .solely in producing sterile 

 gonidia. But if we suppose these bodies to be homologous with spermatia, the 

 whole matter becomes intelligible from the points of view which have now been 

 discussed. Only one objection has been brought forward to this view. Brefeld 1 

 calls attention to the difficulty of accounting for the concurrence in ' Sordaria ' of 



1 Schimmelpilze, IV, p. 143. 



