140 A MANUAL OF THE ASPERGILL1 



as A. gracilis (XRRL No. 156). Whether further accumulation of strains 

 will justify giving Biourge's proposed name, A. sartoryi, sectional or varietal 

 status or merely emphasize the completeness of the series as showing great 

 variations in structural detail is left uncertain. There does not appear to 

 be any warrant for preserving A. gracilis var. exiguus Bainier and Sartory 

 (1912 a). According to the description this variety differs slightly in phy- 

 siological characters from A . gracilis Bainier. 



A. conicus Blochwitz, in Dale, Ann. Mycol. 12: 38. 1914. Previously 

 described by Dale as a Penicillium in Ann. Mycol. 10: 465. 1912. 



See also Thorn and Church "The Aspergilli" p. 125. 1926. 



Th? outstanding character of this species is found by microscopic ex- 

 amination of colonies which become buckled or contorted from a close 

 felting of mycelia. Relationship back toward the A . glaucus group is found 

 in the sterigmata, and in the elliptical conidia. Heads differing little in 

 microscopic structure from A. gracilis are found to be more or less 

 completely submerged in dark green to almost black slime. Many strains 

 have been collected from widely separated regions showing all gradations 

 from a trace of slime only to complete submergence of the heads, 

 particularly in old cultures. 



Dale isolated the strain first described from English soil, and sent dupli- 

 cate cultures labeled Penicillium sp. to Blochwitz and to Thorn; Thom re- 

 turned the very brief descriptive note without name as published by Dale 

 in 1912. Later Blochwitz proposed by letter to her the name only, A. 

 conicus, which was published by Dale in 1914 without further description. 

 Later, in his own publication, Die Gattung Aspergillus (1929), Blochwitz 

 denies the slime development as a character of his organism and redescribes 

 the species in terms to make A . conicus cover the section of this group re- 

 presented by Smith's A. restrictus (1931). Since the name was already in 

 the literature for the slimy series which certainly appears in culture from 

 widely separated places, it should stand as originally applied. Whether 

 the slime disappears in some strains long kept on artificial media is not 

 settled. 



In 1928, Biourge contributed under the manuscript name A. cyanogenes 

 a strain which reproduced the characters given by Thom and Church for A . 

 conicus. This or a nearly related organism appeared as a contaminant in 

 several of the cultures received from Biourge. The culture (Thom No. 

 4733.138) figured in his Monograph (1923) as Xo. 126 in Plate XXI, under 

 P. glabrum Dale was another. Still another strain from Biourge, labeled 

 A. viridans differed only in the delayed development of the slimy covering 

 of the columnar mass of conidia. 



