COPRINUS ATRAMENTARIUS 273 



He evidently thought that the narrowed end of each cystidium 

 was the apical end and that, when the spores were being discharged, 

 it projected freely into an interlamellar space. It may well have been 

 this error which suggested to him that a cystidium is really like a 

 flask in function, that the wall closing the end of the neck acts as a 

 stopper which drops out when the cystidium is ripe, and that through 



Fig. 115. — Coprinus atramentarius . Photomicrograph of a 

 transverse section through several gills, showing the 

 cystidia crossing the interlamellar spaces, and separating 

 the parallel-sided gills. Magnification, 61, 



the neck the cystidial contents escape. His supposed discoveries 

 that the cystidia produce spermatozoids ^ and fall from the gills 

 with the spores ^ were simply further errors suggested by his imagina- 

 tion and involved with his fanciful theory that the cystidia are 

 antheridia and that their spermatozoids fertilise the spores, which he 

 regarded as female gametes. The reason why the base of a cystidium 



^ W. G. Smith, " Reproduction in Coprinus radiatus,'' Grevillea, vol. iv, 1875, p. 62. 



2 W. G. Smith, loc. nt. On p. 60 he says : " The spores naturally fall to the earth, 

 and with them the cystidia, and it is upon the moist earth that fertilisation is 

 generally carried out." 



VOL. III. T 



