TAXONOIMY OF THE PILOBOLIDAE 197 



epispore from those of P. oedipus, and, moreover, the fungus agreed 

 in all other respects but its minuteness with the true Kleinii into 

 which it gradually passed on the following days. It would seem 

 likely that the inequality of the spores in the same sporangium, 

 together with the dwarfed size, was due to the fact that the fungus 

 had not yet established itself, and was of weak and uncertain growth, 

 like some of the dwarf forms of Coprinus. 



Brefeld, in 1872, in his Untersuchungen iiber Pilze mentions 

 and figures a species which he assigns to the genus Pilobolus, under 

 the name P. Mucedo, but afterwards (1881) he discovered this to 

 be, in part at least, the same as that previously called by Cesati 

 P. anomalus. In the same work (1881) he gives a short account of 

 the other species assigned by him to Pilobolus, but not one of the 

 names he uses is that to which the species is entitled, as will be 

 seen by the following list : his 



P. crystallinus (Fig. 99, A) = P. Kleinii van Tiegh. 



P. oedipus (Fig. 102) = P. Kleinii, iovma sphaerospora Gr. 



P. microsporus (Fig. 99, B) = P. crystallinus Tode. 



P. roridus — P. longipes van Tiegh. (Fig. 100). 



Brefeld, however, like van Tieghem, observed zygospores in Pilo- 

 bolus anomalus ( = Pilaira anomala). He found them on horse dung. 

 It will be seen that in " this strange eventful history " nearly 

 every author seemed to be fated to misunderstand in some degree 

 the opinions of those who had preceded him. It was not until 1875 

 that van Tieghem succeeded in clearing up the confusion in which 

 the subject had been plunged, especially in relation to the Mucor 

 roridus of Bolton. Bolton expressly describes his species (Fig. 98, 

 p. 193), which he had found in the neighbourhood of Halifax, as 

 " four lines high, pellucid and white, sustaining a small globular 

 head, like a minute pearly drop, with a black spot on its upper part, 

 which gives to the globe the resemblance of an eye in miniature." 

 No other author but Klein had been able, up to this time, to meet 

 with a species answering to this description, and hence it was 

 doubted by some, as by Persoon, Coemans, Greville, and Purton, 

 whether it was really distinct ; Klein, as has been said, failed to 

 recognise it in his microsporus, and it was reserved for van Tieghem 



