242 DIVISION II. COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 



usually formed above a conical projection in the Fungus-body. Since the agreement 

 is otherwise so complete we may certainly consider these bodies as spermogonia which 

 have no outer wall of their own, but are covered over instead by the rind of the tree 

 which they inhabit. But this affords reason for a further concession and allows us 

 to give the name of open spermogonia to such cushion-shaped or club-shaped bodies 

 formed on the surface of the substratum as Tulasne has described in Bulgaria sar- 

 coides and Peziza fusarioides ; for the outer surface of these bodies is covered with 

 a hymenium, which, together with its products, behaves in the same way as the 

 hymenium of the closed spermogonia previously mentioned. 



The third and last point of agreement to be observed in all the formations of 

 which we are speaking lies in their relation in place and in the time of their develop- 

 ment to the production of the ascocarps. In all cases which have been fully 

 investigated we find the same arrangement as in Collema and Polystigma ; the 

 formation of spermogonia and spermatia always precedes that of the sporocarps or 

 coincides with the first appearance of their primordia. At the same time the 

 formation of spermatia may continue beyond the period of the orientation of the 

 sporocarps, and both kinds of organs may be repeated more than once on a long- 

 lived thallus; but this makes no essential difference. The two kinds of organs 

 usually occur close to one another on the same thallus ; dioecious distribution, to 

 which attention has been called above in the case of Collema, has been observed a 

 few times in some Lichen-fungi (Spilonema, Bornet, Ephebe pubescens). 



We do not certainly know the {.me function of all the bodies which are spoken 

 of in this section as spermogonia and spermatia. What we are able to conjecture 

 on the subject may be gathered from previous sections, and will be considered also 

 below in section LXXIV. 



SECTION LXX. We have insisted in the foregoing, remarks on the invariably 

 small size of the spermatia, and on their simplicity of structure and incapacity of 

 germination, or, to speak more correctly, the absence of observed capacity of 

 germination; and these conditions make it difficult to determine a number of other cases, 

 which may for the present be placed together under the head of doubtful spermatia. 

 We learn from a series of observations that there are small rod-shaped or spherical 

 cells in the Ascomycetes, which have all the known positive and negative characters 

 of spermatia, but are abscised at other places in the thallus than in or on distinct 

 spermogonia. 



Firstly, such cells are said to occur in the sporocarps themselves, between or 

 near the asci. Gibelli 1 states that many Verrucarieae, especially those with simple 

 spores and without paraphyses in the hymenium, have no proper spermogonia, 

 but that the lower portion of the perithecium is covered with asci, the upper 

 with spermatia-forming sterigmata ; but other observers 2 do not corroborate this 

 statement. We learn from Tulasne that slender branched hyphae, from which 

 countless small rod-shaped ' spermatia ' are abscised, are found between the asci at 

 the places where paraphyses otherwise occur in some but not all the apothecia in 



1 Sugli org. reprod. del gen. Verrucaria ^Mem. soc. ital . di sc. nat. I). 

 * Stahl, Beitr. z. Entw. d. Flechten, I, p. 40. 



