Some Neiv Microscopic Fungi. By Miss A. Lor rain Smith. 423 



Entomophthora has been known hitherto as a parasite of insects and 

 larvce; it is here whollv confined to dead tissue. 



Gymnoascus verticillatus sp. n., plate III. fig. 2. 



Fruit composed of loose deep-brown hyphae, the outer ends free, 

 thick- walled, and beset with regular verticils of 4 curved blunt 

 branchlets up to 15 /x in length and about 5 fi in width, the inner 

 ends narrower, irregularly branched, the branches more angular, the 

 whole forming tangled clumps ; spores scattered among the filaments, 

 separate or in ascus-like groups, globose, minute, about 2' 5 jjl in dia- 

 meter, ascus-like groups somewhat oblong, 10 /x by 7 /x, dark- coloured. 

 The specimens were all too old to determine the connection of the 

 ascus-groups with the interior branches. 



On the bones of a dead rabbit that had been buried under a 

 tree, in a garden at Isle worth, for about a year. 



I am indebted for the above two species of fungi to Dr. Gk V. 

 Poore, F.R.S., who has made a prolonged study of the " earth in 

 relation to the preservation and destruction of contagia," and of the 

 agents that are active in the disintegration of dead animal matter. 

 In connection with his research, he buried some rabbits in wire cages, 

 that the bodies might be in close contact with the soil. At the 

 Natural History Museum, South Kensington, I had the opportunity 

 of examining for fungi the fragments of exhumed remains after the 

 softer parts had almost entirely disappeared. I found the fungi de- 

 scribed above, and several other species more or less well known. 

 There was still another which I was unable to determine, and which 

 I consider also new to science, but the specimens were too old to pro- 

 nounce definitely on them. They had evidently formed little balls the 

 size of a small pea, with rather thin walls of loosely interwoven delicate 

 brownish hyphse, and filled with a mass of powdery reddish-brown 

 echinulate spores, some of which were in groups that strongly suggested 

 an ascus. But the specimens were all too old for determination. 



Coniothyrium Boydeanum sp. n., plate III. fig. 3. 



Perithecia in small groups or scattered, developed on the inner 

 bark and bursting the cuticle, somewhat lentiform, 300 /x by 200 //,, 

 parenchymatous, surrounded by a few loose hypho?, yellow-brown ; 

 spores globose-ovate, usually about 12 /x in diameter, but varying 

 to 15 /x by 10 /x, colourless, then dark smoky-brown, smooth, with 

 granular contents. 



On dead branches of Fuchsia, collected at Seamill, Ayrshire, by 

 Mr. D. A. Boyd, October 1899. 



Libertella blepharis sp. n., plate III. fig. 4. 



Pustules of one or several cavities beneath the outer bark, the 

 spores escaping by a wide opening and forming a milk-white layer on 

 the surrounding bark ; sporophores erect, slender, branched, slightly 



