332 



DIVISION II. COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 



sides of hyphal branches, and are divided transversely into shorter rods before or 

 after abscision (Fig. 161). These small rods are very abundantly and frequently pro- 

 duced in some species, as for instance in Coprinus lagopus, but not in all the individuals 

 which form basidia. In other species, as C. ephemeroides, they are few and rare ; in 

 C. stercorarius, as may be gathered from what has been said above, they do not 

 occur at all. In Brefeld's careful cultivations the rods always perished without ger- 

 minating, in C. lagopus sometimes after a doubtful commencement of germination ; 

 Van Tieghem's statement with regard to their power of germination must therefore be 

 accepted with caution. From the facts in our possession we must speak of them as 

 gonidia the germination of which has not been observed. 



A formation of gonidia of a certain kind has also been observed in the 

 Nidularieae, where young mycelial hyphae, if imperfectly fed, break up by transverse 



divisions into cylindrical cells, which ger- 

 minate under favourable conditions and 

 develope new normal mycelia with peridia. 

 It appears therefore that in the best- 

 known species a formation of ' gonidia ' 

 may be introduced into the section of the 

 development between two successive gener- 

 ations of basidiospore-generations, in most 

 cases as a facultative occurrence depending 

 on external causes, in others perhaps as a 

 necessary or at any rate a very regular 

 process. More thorough investigation is 

 necessary on this point especially in the 

 Tremellineae ; in the Nidularieae the acci- 

 dental nature of the occurrence and its de- 

 pendence on external and occasional causes 

 is evident. 



Finally, the observations on Sphaero- 



bolus, to which we must now revert, show when compared with the foregoing that 

 the gonidia described above as gemmae in this Fungus have a prominent position in 

 the development, since the task of propagation devolves almost exclusively on them ; 

 at least the basidiospores are much behind them in this respect and in the natural 

 course of things need scarcely germinate at all. 



For some time the course of the development in the Basidiomycetes was supposed to 

 be quite different from that which has now been described, and efforts were made 

 to show that it was different ; it was thought that the compound sporophore, like 

 the sporocarp of the Ascomycetes, was developed from a fertilised archicarp, which 

 became surrounded in various ways, as in the Ascomycetes, with an envelope of hyphae. 

 Karsten 1 has thrown out some doubtful hints in this direction since 1860, in connection 

 with Agaricus campestris. More decided suggestions of the kind arose from the 

 discovery of the development of the sporocarps of Erysiphe, and these were probably 

 the occasion of the paper of A. S. Oersted 2 , which described ' oospheres ' formed 



FIG. 161. Cafrittus lagopus, Fr. Mycelial hypha m with 

 a branch a from which rods are being abjointed. * rods 

 or gonidia detached, some still connected together in rows. 

 c the same isolated. After Brefeld, from Liirssen's Handbook. 

 a and * magn. 400, c 600 times. 



' Geschlechtsleben d. Pflanz. p. 50, and Bonplandia, 1862, p. 63. 

 3 Verhandl. d. k. Dan. Ges. d. \Viss. i Jan. 1865. 



