564 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Fungi. 



Phosphorescent Fungi.* — D. M' Alpine enumerates the species of 

 Fungus in which phosphorescence [more properly luminosity] has been 

 observed, twenty-one in all ; of which five are peculiar to Australia, and 

 eleven belong to the genus Pleurotus. The luminosity is not due to 

 the presence of phosphorescent bacteria, but to a process of combustion 

 in the fungus itself, confined to the living tissue. It is entirely depen- 

 dent on the presence of oxygen and on a sufficiently high temperature, 

 but is not affected by moisture. The author regards the light as pro- 

 ceeding, not from within the organism, but from excreted luminous 

 metabolic products. It is probably useful to the fungus in attracting 

 insects which assist in the dissemination of the spores. 



Enzyme of Monilia sitophila.f — According to F. A. F. C. Went, 

 this mould-fungus is employed in Western Java for decomposing arachis- 

 seed cake ; it also occurs on putrefying bread and wheat flour, and on 

 dead leaf-sheaths of the sugar-cane. It has a bright orange-red colour, 

 the pigment being produced only in the presence of light (blue and 

 violet rays). An enzyme, which the author terms maltoglucose, is ex- 

 clusively and very unequally secreted when the mould is supplied with 

 certain carbohydrates. It is formed in large quantities when raffinose, 

 maltose, dextrin, or starch is present ; also in the presence of cellulose, 

 galactose, xylose, and sucrose ; it is not secreted when the carbonaceous 

 food supplied is glycerol. 



Sporange of Cystopus Tragopogonis. % — P. A. Dangeard has observed, 

 in this parasite, very common on species of Tragopogon and other Com- 

 positse, that the nuclei in the conids towards the interior of the leaf 

 differ from those in the superficial cells of the leaf in being pyriform 

 instead of spherical, and in being attached to the ectoplasm by a kind of 

 pedicel. He compares this with similar phenomena in the Ascomycetes 

 and in Vaucheria, and connects it with the formation of the flagellum of 

 zoospores. 



Behaviour of the Cell-nucleus in the Zygospores of Sporodinia 

 grandis.§ — E. Gruber has again studied the processes connected with 

 the formation of the zygospore in this fungus. He is unable to confirm 

 the peculiarity described by Leger as the formation of " embryo- 

 spheres." In the mode of conjugation of the gametes he agrees with 

 that writer. Iu the newly formed zygote are a large number of nuclei 

 uniformly distributed through the protoplasm ; at a later period the 

 larger number of them are crowded at the periphery, but no difference 

 could be detected between these and the central ones. The subsequent 

 fate of these nuclei was not determined with certainty. On germinating 

 the nuclei pass in large numbers into the germinating tube. 



The author believes that the processes connected with fertilisation 

 in Sporodinia grandis agree in essential points with those observed in 



* Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, xxv. (1900) pp. 54S-5S (2 pis.). 



t SB. k. Akad. Wetensch. Amsterdam, iii. (1901) pp. 489-502. See Journ. 

 Chem. Soc, 1901, Abstr. ii. p. 411. 



: Le Botaniste (Dangeard), vii. (1901) pp. 279-81 (1 fig.). 



§ Ber. Deutsch. Bot. Ges., xix. (1901) pp. 51-5 (1 pi). Cf. this Journal, 1898, 

 ,p. 657. 



