HISTORY OF PILOBOLUS 7 



Miiller, according to Coemans,i depicts along with a discharged 

 sporangium a worm. This may have been carried with the projectile 

 during its flight through the air. 



To test the supposition that Nematode worms may travel 

 through the air upon a discharged sporangium, I placed a sheet of 



Fig. 4. — Strongylus larvae (Nematode worms) swarming up the side of a 

 glass culture-dish from horse dung, seven days after the dung (fresh) 

 was placed in the dish. Fruit-bodies of Pilobolus longipcs appeared on 

 the dung a few days before and, to the left, some of their black dis- 

 charged sporangia can be faintly seen sticking to the surface of the 

 glass^ Some of the larvae swarmed up the sporangiophore.s, and tlio.se 

 which reached the sporangia may have been shot away with the sporangia 

 when these were discharged. At Winnipeg. Natural size. 



clean dry glass in front of a large number of fruit-bodies of Pilobolus 

 longipes that had appeared on horse dung infected with Nematodes 

 which had begun to swarm. Soon fifty or more sporangia struck 

 and stuck to the glass plate. On examining the discharged sporangia 

 I found that worms were associated with two of them. Under the 

 free turned-out edge of one of these sporangia two worms were 

 partly hidden. The other sporangium was in contact with one end 



1 E. Coemans, Monographie, p. 49. 



