HISTORY OF PILOBOLUS ii 



herbivorous animal which eats the herbage and sporangia together, 

 the reproduction of the fungus is assured. The sporangia open in 

 the stomach, the spores are mixed with the food, the heat of the 

 animal favours their germination, and the spores, on passing out 

 with the residue of digestion, thus find themselves germinating in 

 a substratum indispensable for their development. Throughout 

 the summer of 1860, I thus saw two cows, which I had at my dis- 

 posal, quite unknown to themselves sow and propagate Pilobolus 

 crysiallinus and spread it in all the meadows into which I had them 

 driven ; it is beautiful to see here the two organic realms acting 

 together and assisting one another to assure the reproduction and 

 conservation of a delicate little fungus." ^ 



Both Cohn and Coemans, as indeed all later workers, were im- 

 pressed with the periodic development of Pilobolus, and with the 

 fact that each fruit-body grows to maturity and discharges its 

 sporangium within twenty-four hours. Grove (1884)2 remarks 

 with truth that " Pilobolus is the Ephemeron of plant life," and he 

 adds, a propos of the diurnal succession of crops of fruit-bodies : 

 " While contemplating the saucer in which I grew my specimens, 

 after Hstening to the mimic bombardment which raged so furiously 

 an hour before, standing as it were on the field of battle with nothing 

 but dead and dying soldiers stretched around me, I have felt as 

 Welhngton might have felt after Waterloo, but with a consolation 

 denied to that gallant hero. I knew that even then around my feet 

 another army was growing up among the mangled remains without 

 any help from me, and would be ready the next day wdth full 

 equipment to march with me to victory again." 



Brefeld,^ in 1881, as a result of investigations made upon pure 

 cultures, described and illustrated the hfe-history of a Pilaira— then 

 known as Pilobolus anomalus Ces. but subsequently as Pilaira 

 Cesatii van T.— and of four species of Pilobolus. As Grove * has 

 pointed out, none of these four species was correctly named ; 

 Brefeld's P. crystallinus is P. Kleinii van T. ; his P. oedipus is 



1 E. Coemans, loc. cit., p. 53. ^ w. B. Grove, he. cit., p. 18. 



3 O. Brefeld, Untersuchnngen iiber Schimmelpilze, Heft IV, Leipzig, 1881, 

 pp. 60-80, Taf. Ill and IV. 



* W. B. Grove, loc. cit., p. 30. 



