M. L. U. TuhsiaG on the Erf/ot of Rije. 49& 



nature and destination. Yet its enormous volume in comparison 

 with the Sphacelium deserved more attention^ and should have led 

 to a suspicion that the latter did not play the most important part. 

 The discovery of a sporiferous portion of the Ergot was undoubt- 

 edly a considerable step forwards in the knowledge of this singular 

 vegetable, the toxicological and medicinal virtues of which give 

 it a double interest ; but it does not appear at present that this 

 discovery sufficiently authorized the removal of the Ergot of 

 Grasses from the number of the Sclerotia, among which M. De- 

 Candolle properly placed it. In fact, the Ergot of Rye, which I 

 take as a type, is formed, like the majority of the Sclerotia, of a 

 very dense tissue of polygonal cells, intimately connected together, 

 and turgid with an oleaginous liquid. Moreover, an attentive 

 study of its development shows that it grows exactly in the man- 

 ner of a Sclerotium, that is to say, in the midst of a filamentous 

 tissue which invades the flower and in particular the ovary. One 

 circumstance however is peculiar to it, namely that it rudely re- 

 sembles the seed of Rye. The reason of this is, that it is deve- 

 loped in the unfecundated ovule of this plant ; for although the 

 integuments of the ovule are greatly dilated and rendered unre- 

 cognizable by the entophyte, they become enlarged without en- 

 tirely diverging from the form which they would have possessed 

 had they been destined to protect a true seed ; and in this re- 

 spect they resemble ovaries of Wheat in which the Tilletia Caries 

 has taken the place of the seed. That which was at first called 

 the sphacelium (Leveille), then the sacculus (Fee), in the Ergot, 

 is nothing more than the accumulation toward the summit (and 

 most frequently both around and within the still subsisting ex- 

 tremity of the ovary) of the filaments of the mycelium, of which 

 this sphacelium forms an integrant part, and of the conidia* 

 (sporidia of authors) which originate from it; but as the fila- 

 ments and the conidia are found more or less abundantly on all 

 points of the Ergot, the supposed sphacelium is merely an acro- 

 genous production, as was imagined, and it would be wrong to 

 attribute precise limits to it. 



If there were nothing more in the Ergot of Rye, than a Sclero- 

 tium with the mycelium which has produced it and the conidia, 

 scattered over the filaments of the latter, there would be no ne- 

 cessity to make these last two into a particular entity, or to give 

 them a collective and special name [Sphacelia, Lev., Fee); for, 

 even combined with the Sclerotium itself (pseudostroma, Fee), 

 they do not constitute a complete plant (the Sphacelidium of Fee), 

 and taken together, are properly speaking only organs of vege- 

 tation. The fungus which arises from all this arrangement, 



* Vide, with regard to this word, my note on the Reproductive Apparatus 

 in the Fungi, Comptes Reudus, March 31, 1851. (Annals of Nat. Hist. 

 2nd Ser. vol. viii. p. 114.) 



