176 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



and rebranch to produce the basidia which make up the hymenium. 

 Each basidium has a body which is slender and cylindrical and 

 which develops at its apex two stout divergent arms or sterigmata, 

 the tips of which come to penetrate through the surface of the 

 gelatinous matrix (Fig. 60, B). Each sterigma produces at its free 

 tip a single, elongated, curved spore which is provided with a well- 

 marked hilum. The time taken for a spore to develop from a 

 just recognisable rudiment to full size is only about 23 minutes. 

 After a further 27 minutes the spore is discharged. Thus about 

 50 minutes only are taken up in the development, ripening, and 

 discharge of each spore. There can be little doubt that this rapid 

 rate of coming to maturity for each individual spore is a factor 

 in assisting a revived fruit-body in rapidly resuming its spore- 

 discharging function after rain. The drop excreted at the hilum 

 begins to appear about 16 seconds before the spore is discharged, 

 grows until it attains the diameter of the spore, and is then carried 

 away by the spore when this is shot from its sterigma. A spore 

 can be shot out from its sterigma 0* 5-0 '65 mm., so that although 

 the hymenium often looks upwards, the wind has an opportunity 

 of carrying away the spores before they can fall back on the 

 hymenium. 



Massee, 1 in his British Fungus-Flora, describes the yellow 

 fruit-bodies of Dacryomyces deliquescens as follows. 



" Dacryomyces deliquescens Duby. 



" Gelatinous, rounded or irregular, convex, gyrose, yellow, 

 hyaline, basal portion root-like and entering the matrix, spores 

 cylindrical, obtuse, curved, 3-septate, 15-17 X 6-7 //.. 



" Dacryomyces deliquescens. Duby, Bot. Gall., p. 729 ; Cke., 

 Hdbk., p. 351. 



" On pine-wood. In perfection during the winter months. 

 Forming yellow subcircular convex masses 1-4 lines broad, often 

 growing in long lines out of cracks in the wood." 



Massee's statement that the spores are 3-septate is misleading. 

 The fact is that the spores, when on their sterigmata and im- 

 mediately after discharge, are unicellular just like those of other 

 Tremellineae, and only become 3-septate and 4-celled when lying 

 1 G. Massee, British Fungus-Flora, London, 1892, vol. i, p. 67. 



