128 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



for believing that the Coprinus Type of fruit-body has been derived 

 by specialisation from the Non-Coprinus Type and not vice versa} 



Lange,2 in 1915, published a revision of the Danish Coprini in 

 which he enumerated 32 species and gave an original description 

 of each, including certain microscopic characters. However, he 

 did not discuss the mechanism of the fruit-bodies for the production 

 and liberation of the spores or seek to explain the melting away of 

 the gills. He was evidently unacquainted with my studies pub- 

 lished in the years 1909, 1910, 1912, and 1914, in which I indicated 

 the true limits of the genus Coprinus ; for, were it otherwise, I do 

 not think he would have brought forward the view that Bolbitius 

 can be regarded as a sub-genus of Coprinus or have followed Quelet 

 in removing Psathyrella disseminata and P. impatiens from the genus 

 Psathyrella, where Fries had placed them, and in including them in 

 Coprinus. 



The biological significance of the phenomenon of deliquescence 

 remained entirely unknown until the publication of the first volume 

 of these Researches in the year 1909. In that work I described in 

 detail the mode of the production and liberation of spores in Coprinus 

 comatus ' and pointed out that, in this species, as in Coprini in 

 general : (1) the spores on each gill ripen in succession from below 

 upwards, (2) the spores on each gill are discharged in succession 

 from below upwards, and (3) deliquescence is a process of auto- 

 digestion, which on each gill proceeds from below upwards and 

 destroys those parts of the gill which have already shed their spores 

 and which, if they continued in existence, would hinder the fall of 

 the remaining spores. It thus became clear that autodigestion has 

 a perfectly definite and useful function to fulfil in connection with 

 the liberation of the spores. 



Since 1909 my studies of the organisation of Coprinus fruit - 

 bodies have been continued, and a number of further details of 



1 A. H. R. Buller, Researches on Fungi, vol. i, 1908, pp. 214-215. Presumably 

 it was on account of his belief in the ancestral position of the genu3 Coprinus that 

 Massee placed the Melanosporae before the other families of Agaricineae in his 

 British Fungus- Flora. 



2 Jakob E. Lange, " Studies in the Agarics of Denmark," Da>isk Botanisk Arkiv, 

 Bd. II, Copenhagen, 1915. 



3 A. H. R. Buller, Researches on Fungi, vol. i, 1909, chap. xix. pp. 196-215. 



