338 DIVISION II. COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 



It would be possible to assume another point of connection between the 

 Hymenomycetes and the Gastromycetes, if we regard the mode of development of the 

 compound sporophore from one side only. Then Amanita among the Hymeno- 

 mycetes would approach nearest to the Gastromycetes, because the first development 

 of the parts in one and the other is the result of differentiation in the interior of the 

 primordial coil of hyphae. Brefeld, in connection with some former suggestions of 

 my own of this kind, has recently given decisive weight to the above consideration. 

 But then Amanita is closely connected in all other respects with the series of the 

 Agaricineae ; the agreement between their propagative and especially their hymenial 

 apparatus and that of the Gastromycetes is the very smallest possible. We might dis- 

 regard this fact, and venture a jump across the intervening space, if no better means 

 of connecting these groups could be found. But since we have such a mode before 

 us, and at the same time there is no ground for assuming the existence of two points 

 of union, the jump need not be made. The facts lead to the other conclusion, that 

 the development of the compound sporophores by internal differentiation, called 

 above the angiocarpous, makes its appearance at two widely separated points within 

 the group of the Basidiomycetes, namely, in the series of the Agaricineae and in that 

 of the Polyporeae. From the Polyporeae it leads further on to the formation of the 

 Gastromycetes. 



After the special descriptions which have already been given of the complex 

 Lycoperdaceae and especially of the Phalloideae with their strange forms and differ- 

 entiations of tissue, nothing further is required to show that they are the most highly 

 developed of the Basidiomycetes. It is apparent also that all the series of the 

 Basidiomycetes converge towards the more simple Thelephoreae and Tremellineae 

 and meet in them. These forms may therefore be a connecting link between the 

 Basidiomycetes and the rest of the Fungi, and since no such link is known elsewhere, 

 there is a strong antecedent probability that this exact point of connection is to be 

 found there. Comparison shows an evident close affinity between the Tremellineae 

 and the tremelloid Uredineae (see page 283). In fact there is no essential difference 

 between the two groups either in the course of development or in the structure of the 

 sporophores. It is unnecessary to repeat here what has been already said respecting 

 the former. If special stress is to be laid on the formation of gonidia and sprouts in 

 the germination of the Tremellineae, this phenomenon is undoubtedly repeated in the 

 abjunction, so common in the Uredineae, of ' secondary ' and even tertiary sporidia on 

 primary sporidia which do not at once find a substratum favourable to nutrition when 

 they first germinate. These sporidial sprouts are produced, as far as is known, only 

 in small numbers, but this constitutes only a quantitative difference and has an 

 evident relation, as may be remarked in passing, to the strictly parasitic mode of life 

 of the Uredineae. The conformation of the compound sporophores in the members of 

 both divisions is to a certain extent the same. The organs termed basidia in 

 Auricularia (page 306) do not differ in any essential point from the teleutospores of 

 Chrysomyxa and Coleosporium ; the forms too of the basidiospores or sporidia may 

 be almost said to be the same. Uredineae like Leptochrysomyxa Abietis are simply 

 Tremellineae, and would be placed with them in the natural system if their allies 

 which form aecidia were not known. The same may be said without exaggeration 

 of the Leptopuccinieae, for the teleutospores of the latter, which must form one term 



