462 Meyen's Report for 1839 on Physiological Botany. 



and Tremellince, but also the Thibercularince and CoryneacecBi 

 however, according to the later observations on the mode of 

 production of the spores, it is absolutely necessjiry to separate 

 the Octosporidece from the true HymenomycetcB with free spores. 

 It is, however, to be desired that this family of Fungi should 

 receive another name, for the sporangia of the large Sphaerice 

 are also filled with eight spores, and their appearance has 

 much similarity with that of the sporangia of the Pezizas, etc. 

 In speaking of the Pessi^ce we have a description of the for- 

 mation of the spores, from which it appears that the spore- 

 skin is formed round the drops of oil which are found with 

 larger and smaller grains in the asci. Here we also have a 

 new theory of the formation of cells, which the spores of the 

 Fungi, according to M. Corda, represent. 



M. Corda treats very circumstantially of the structure of the 

 hymenium in the true Hymenomycetcs, and he endeavours to 

 show that the honour of the first exact observations on this 

 subject belongs to him ; for in the winter of 1833-34 he had 

 sent to the Academy of Sciences of Berlin a treatise ^ On the 

 Structure of the Spores of Cryptogamic Plants,^ accom- 

 panied with many figures, in which both the free quaternate 

 spores, the antheridiae, the spore-cuticle, the spore-nucleus 

 and the oily globules, are described and delineated. The 

 greater number of the members of the Academy are said to 

 have thought highly of this work, but the greatest micro- 

 scopical observer of Germany declared these observations to 

 be incorrect : the free quaternate spores were false ; the an- 

 theridiae (and partly also the basidia) were, according to his 

 observations, eggs of insects, &c. In the former Reports for 

 1836, p. 51 — 55, and 1838, p. 167^ I have given a historical 

 view of the observations made in this department, and I 

 mentioned M. Corda^s discoveries as published in the ^Flora^ 

 of 1833 ; however, according to the above, M. Corda shortly 

 afterwards published a new work (that read in the Academy), 

 which certainly gives him the justest claims to the confirma- 

 tion and extension of Micheli^s observations ; and if his as- 

 sertions could be confirmed by a member of the above-men- 

 tioned Academy, they are certainly to be put before those 

 of M. Leveille ; the latter, however, states that he had com- 

 municated his results ten years ago to Persoon and others*. 



* [Ascherson appears to have been the first who made any general exa- 

 mination of the naked spores of Hymenomycetes. Insulated figures and 

 observations virere made by several who did not understand the full import- 

 ance of the facts before them. Corda certainly had no general notions on 

 the subject when he figured in 1837 the structure of Coprinus. In the 

 same year analyses of several true Agarics are given by him in Sturm's 

 Deutschland's Flora, which repeat still the generally received erroneous no- 

 tions as to their structure. — Edit.] 



