274 '^^^ Irish Naturalist, 



examination than could then and there be made, so I careful!}^ 

 collected a quantity of the material and put it up in glass 

 tubes for subsequent determination. A few days later, going 

 over the contents of my collecting box, I came upon these 

 tubes and mounted some of their contents for the microscope. 

 Nothing could be easier than the process adopted ; and as I 

 may have some readers who, possessing microscopes, might 

 care to take up w^ork of this kind, I will now state how the 

 mounts w^ere made. A few of the little stalked bodies were 

 removed from the matrix by the aid of a dissecting needle, 

 and immersed in a drop of absolute alcohol on a clean slide. 

 As soon as the alcohol had all but completely disappeared 

 b}" evaporation, it was replaced by a drop of glycerine, 

 and a clean cover- glass applied. The object of the alcohol is 

 to get rid of any air that may be, and usually is, entangled in 

 the mycelium, and which would greatly interfere with the 

 transparency of the mount if it were allowed to remain. An 

 alternative procedure is to mount in glycerine at once, and 

 after putting on the cover-glass, heat the preparation over a 

 spirit-lamp till ebullition just commences. This also drives 

 out the air, but the process is rather a severe one, especially 

 for a delicate object, and liable to cause alteration in the 

 natural appearance. The preparations thus made proved 

 very successful, and on placing the slide under the microscope 

 with a moderatel}^ low power (x 150), I saw it very much as 

 it looks in figure 2. The stalk and head can now be distinctly 

 seen, and also the fact that the former is composed of a number 

 of parallel hyphae or threads. The head is also composed of 

 threads which radiate from the stalk, and round about the 

 edge where these threads become free and end,, they may be seen 

 to have a peculiar knobbed or headed appearance. We now 

 turn on the high power ( x 400) and see (figure 3) that the cause 

 of this beaded appearance is the fact that the terminal portion 

 of each hypha or thread is divided by thick partitions into a 

 string of cubical cells, of which the end ones display a tendency 

 to have their corners rounded off so as to become subglobose\ 

 or, in ordinary language, nearly round. If now, without chang- 

 ing the power, we move the slide so as to bring the stalk into 

 the field, we can, by gradually working upwards, make out 



* This is not well shown in the drawing. 



