Si B7'itish UrediuecB and Ustila^inece. 



According- to Brefeld,* it is seldom that more than three 

 promycelial spores are produced from one teleutospore 

 before it becomes emptied of protoplasm and exhausted. 

 Be this as it may, if a few teleutospores be placed in a 

 drop of water on a glass slide, and examined at intervals 

 for two or three days, one can see with the naked eye that 

 there has fallen to the bottom of the drop a whitish cloud. 

 Upon microscopic observation, this cloud is found to con- 

 sist of an immense assemblage of promycelial spores. 

 They are cylindrical bodies, with somewhat attenuated 

 extremities, and often measure from 8 to lo^ in length, 

 and from v^ to 2/^ in breadth. Hence it appears that 

 they have increased in size since they fell off the pro- 

 mycelium. After a time this increase in size ceases, but 

 not before some few odd ones here and there have attained 

 a length of from 20 to 30^. 



Brefeld found, by the culture of isolated promycelial 

 spores in nahrlosung, that after these bodies had fallen away 

 from the teleutospore which produced them they not only 

 multiplied themselves, but increased enormously in length 

 and thickness. This they did with great rapidity. They 

 more resembled hyphaj than promycelial spores, and each 

 soon became more or less septate. They multiplied by 

 giving off a small bud-like projection laterally, and at a 

 short distance from one or other of their extremities. This 

 bud rapidly grew into a second spore, but before it attained 

 the dimensions of its parent the latter had given off a 

 similar bud towards its opposite extremity ; and so the 

 process of multiplication goes on until the nahrlosung is 

 exhausted. When this takes place, instead of multiplying 

 in the manner above described, the promycelial spores give 

 off hyphzE of considerable length, which become septate at 

 intervals from below upwards, and the protoplasm is passed 



* Brefeld, loc. cif., pp. 104-116, t. viii., ix., rigs. 1-16. 



