10 M. C. Montagne's Sketch of the Class Fungi. 



There is still a remarkable fact which we must not omit. Tham- 

 nidium elegans, Lk. (Ascophora elegans, Corda, Ic. Fung., iii. p. 14. 

 t. 2. f. 43.) has presented to Corda two sorts of fructification*, as 

 is the case with all other agamous plants. The verticillate ramuli 

 are terminated by reproductive gemmae, while the main thread is 

 tipped by a true sporigerous peridiolum. 



The little plants which form this family are worthy of the great- 

 est attention, especially in a physiological point of view. They are 

 not less capable of exciting in the highest degree the curiosity of the 

 naturalist, whose pleasure it is to contemplate the wonders of creation. 

 If they less attract the vulgar eye, it is because without the micro- 

 scope to it they scarcely exist. What a new world do we owe then 

 to this instrument ! The Mucedines, for example, which rival in 

 elegance some of our prettiest articulated hydrophytes, form some- 

 times in the space of a square inch an immense forest of trees from 

 one to two lines high, varied, but always elegant in their ramification, 

 bearing at the extremities of their whorled, umbellate, or panicled 

 branches, bunches or heads of seed producing the most exquisite 

 effect. Sometimes they are less branched, and have their uncinate, 

 clavate, umbellate or shrubby tips loaded with fruit. Nature, in 

 compensation for their brief existence, reproduces them everywhere, 

 so that it is always easy to find individuals for examination. 



The Hyphomycetes grow on vegetable or animal substances in the 

 course of decomposition f. In general they are not difficult in their 

 choice, though some species are confined to particular habitats. 

 The most common of all, PeniciUium glaucum, grows on all sorts of 

 substances, and in all latitudes. 



On the one side the Hyphomycetes approach the Coniomycetes, 

 the lower individuals in the series diff'ering only in the free develop- 

 ment of their hyphasma ; on the other side they touch upon the 

 Caster omycetes, by those Mucorini which have a separable peridium, 

 {e. g. Piloholus). Fries compares them to his Ulvacece (Fl. Scan, 

 p. 357), our subfamily Zoospermte, and remarks that, like these, they 

 have both their inarticulate and septate representatives. 



In the two families which I have just examined, the individuals 

 of which have little use in the oeconomy of nature, except to hasten 

 the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances, or to furnish 

 nutriment for a multitude of insects, the threads at the extremity of 

 which the sporidia grow may be called erecto-divergent ; in the 

 following famihes these same filaments, variously woven and en- 

 tangled, end always, except in the Pyrenomycetes, in becoming erecto- 

 convergent. 



[To be continued.] 



* Sbmething of the kind is exhibited by Ag. racemosus. The lateral 

 heads have the structure of Stilbicm. — M. J. B. 



f An account has lately been published in Ann. Sc. Nat. 1841, of a 

 mould developed in the stomach of a living bird. A fact of the same kind 

 has been described before, in Dr. Valentin's Repertorium fiir Anatomic und 

 Physiologic, bd. 1. 1836.— M. J. B. 



