CHAPTER II. — DIFFERENTIATION OF THE THALLUS. — MYCELIAL STRANDS. 29 



subcorticalis, Persoon. The attempts to find the fructification of these Fungi led to the ol<rvo|4 

 most divergent views ; but there is no need happily to repeat here and criticise 

 the complete enumeration and examination of them which was given in the first 

 edition of this work. Some writers, as P. de Candolle, Eschweiler, Acharius, and more 

 recently Fuckel, endeavoured to prove the Rhizomorphae to be true Pyrenomycetes, 

 and assigned them perithecia, some of which, according to Tulasne, were in fact 

 merely galls, while others belonged to real Pyrenomycetes, which had grown on 

 or close to the strands of the Agaric. Otth regarded as their frueti&eatien a species ej^n-oU 

 of Stilbum or Graphium which is sometimes found on old strands in the 

 form of small black bodies of the thickness of a bristle and 3-4 mm. in length 

 and giving off spores by abjunction, a view which was supported by the resem- 

 blance of their structure to that of the rind of the strands, and which after all 

 may in a limited sense still be correct. The question can only be decided by the 

 history of the development of the Stilbum ; but this is not known, and the species may 

 for the present be considered with greater probability to be a parasite on the strands. 



Other writers, as Palisot de Beauvois, and in more recent times Caspary and 

 Tulasne, looked upon the Hymenomycetes, especially the woody Polyporeae, as 

 the sporophores of the Rhizomorphae, partly because the two were so closely 

 associated in their growth, and partly because these observers confounded the 

 strand-like or membranous mycelia of the former plants with the strands of Agaricus 

 melleus, the characteristic structure of which they did not properly distinguish. 

 Hence Caspary, for instance, brings the Rhizomorphae themselves into genetic 

 connection with the sporophores of quite different species of Polyporus, Trametes Pini, 

 and Agaricus ostreatus. 



The name Rhizomorpha we now know to be superfluous ; it may and should 

 be dispensed with, as I have myself done above. The same may be said of the 

 name Xylostroma mentioned in the preceding pages, as also of the names Himantia, 

 Ozonium, Hypha, Hyphasma, Fibrillaria, Ceratonema, all of Persoon, Byssus, Dill., 

 Dematium, Lk. (in part), Corallofungus, Vaill. They were applied, as is well 

 known, since the time of Palisot de Beauvois to sterile mycelial strands which 

 sometimes attained a great size in damp woods, cellars, and mines, but their connection 

 with distinct forms of sporophore, owing to the slight attention which was formerly 

 paid to the study of mycelia, was never actually decided. 



The forms, which Fries 1 regarded as a distinct genus Anthina, may also be mentioned 

 in connection with sterile mycelial strands of doubtful affinity. The Anthinae, of which I 

 am here speaking, and from which I exclude the section Pterula, Fr. because these appear 

 to be fertile, are cylindrical or ribbon-shaped bodies an inch high on the average and 

 about 1 mm. in thickness, which grow erect from a floccose mycelium largely developed 

 in decaying wood and leaves, and branch in their upper part dichotomously or in 

 a palmate manner. They are either of abrightred colour (A. flammea, A. purpurea) or 

 pale brown (A. pallida). They consist of a strand of parallel hyphae firmly united 

 together by a homogeneous connecting substance, and are formed by the union 

 of the hyphae which spread abundantly through the substratum. The bundle is 

 divided at the upper end, or its hyphae separate from one another and spread on all 

 sides and form the bifurcating or palmate extremities. Specimens are not unfrequently 

 found with the upper end of the plant bent down towards the ground, and there 

 separated into a floccose mycelium or even into net-like anastomoses. I have myself 

 never seen a sporophore in these forms, though Fries says of A. flammea, ' affusa aqua 

 secedunt sporidia.' The small cells laterally attached to the hyphae, which I have 

 occasionally found in A. pallida, and which I formerly spoke of as spores, I am 

 now inclined to regard as very doubtful structures. 



PI. homon. 169. 



