172 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



the cinders with a stick, I satisfied myself, from the absence of wood 

 or dung, etc., in the cinders removed, that the mycelium must have 

 vegetated in sticks, leaves, or some other nutrient substratum, 

 buried beneath the cinders at a depth of more than one foot, and, 

 subsequently, must have grown upwards through the cinders to 

 the surface of the ground where the fruit-bodies had made their 

 appearance. 



Miss Irene Mounce, when investigating the production of Coprinus 

 fruit-bodies from monosporous mycelia in my laboratory, made ten 

 pure cultures of Coprinus comatus on horse dung in large crystallising 

 dishes similar to those already described. Two of the dishes were 

 inoculated with many spores (polysporous cultures) and the other 

 eight with hyphae taken from the inside of a stipe ol a freshly 

 gathered fruit-body. In every dish a heavy white mycelium was 

 produced which, in the course of a month, completely covered the 

 dung ; yet the cultures, like those previously made by myseK, 

 remained entirely sterile. Several of them produced thick mycelial 

 cords at the bottom of the culture dish, and one developed woolly 

 knots on the cords ; but even rudimentary fruit-bodies failed to 

 make their appearance. 



Various changes in the conditions of cultivation of the fungus 

 were made by Miss Mounce in an attempt to bring about fruit-body 

 production. Some of the mycelia were placed in the dark, one in 

 bright sunlight, and the rest in diffuse daylight ; but none of them 

 fruited. 



Richard Falck ^ has observed that fruit-body production in 

 Mendius domesticus is accelerated by a series of transfers : as soon 

 as the mycelium has covered the medium, a piece of mycelium is 

 transferred to a second vessel filled with the same medium, and from 

 the second vessel a similar transfer is made to a third vessel, and so 

 forth. Miss Mounce made a series of such transfers with Coprimis 

 comatus mycelium. A stipe culture was growing on sterilised horse- 

 dung balls in a crystallising dish 5 inches in diameter. As soon as 

 the mycelium had covered the culture medium, a small piece of 



1 R. Falck, "Die Fruclitkorperbildung der im Hause vorkommenden holz- 

 zerstorenden Pilze in Reinkultureii und ihie Bedingungen," Mi/col. Unters. u. 

 Berichte, Jena, Heft I, 1913, p. 62. 



