RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



about in any direction it pleased '' as if in a tiny ocean " (c/. Fig. 2). 



Hence Miiller described his Pilo- 

 bolus as a plant which enclosed 

 a living worm in a crystalhne body 

 and he, therefore, regarded the 

 fungus as a marvellous organism 

 combining characteristics of all the 

 three realms of nature — animal, 

 vegetable, and mineral. Midler's 

 conception of Pilobolus, which is 

 reminiscent of the fabulous mon- 

 sters of antiquity, received wide- 

 spread attention ; but it was 

 shown by later workers to have 

 been based on erroneous obser- 

 vation. Tode, Persoon, Currey, 

 and Coemans all found the worms 

 on the outside of the sporangio- 

 phore and never inside as Miiller 

 and his followers Durieu de 

 Maisonneuve and Leveille had 

 supposed. 1 



Curiously enough, Miiller's 

 error about the position of the 



Fig. 2. — Pilobolus Kleinii. A, a rudimen- 

 tary sporangiophore : a, the rnj-celium ; 



b, tlie basal reservoir ; c, the stipe 

 elongating apically ; the whole filled 

 with dense orange-red protoplasm. 

 B, a mature sjiorangiophore : a, the 

 mycelium ; b, the basal reservoir ; 



c, the stipe now fully elongated ; d, the 

 subsporangial swelling, erroneously 

 supposed to contain two worms swim- 

 ming in its vacuole ; e, the sporan- 

 gium about to be discharged. L)rawn 

 by ]5. Boudier ; photographically 

 copied from Plate 582 of his Icones 

 Mycologiaie ; letters added by the 

 autlior. Magnification, 25. 



^ For the literature on this controversy vide Coemans, Monographie, 

 pp. 48^9. 



