PANUS STYPTICUS LUMINESCENS 409 



Johnson/ in 1920, in pure cultures made from Warwickshire 

 material ; (c) by myself and other members of the British Myco- 

 logical Society, in September, 1922, in six collections of fruit-bodies 

 made in various woods at Keswick ; {d) by Carleton Rea, in 1921, 

 in fruit-bodies collected near Worcester ^ and again, in 1922, in 

 fruit-bodies collected at Keswick ; ^ (e) by E. M. Corner,^ in 1922, 

 in fruit-bodies collected at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire ; and 

 (/) by myself, in 1922 and 1923, in fruit-bodies collected at Great 

 Missenden and, in 1923, in fruit-bodies collected at West Malvern. 

 All these observations were made with a view to finding out whether 

 the English Panus stypticus behaves like the North American in 

 giving out light, but they yielded nothing but negative results. In 

 no case could the faintest trace of light be observed. 



At the Keswick Foray of the British Mycological Society, held 

 in the autumn of 1922 and referred to above, I gave a paper on the 

 Bioluminescence of Panus stypticus and I was naturally desirous of 

 demonstrating the luminosity of the fungus in a dark seance in 

 the same manner as I had demonstrated it at the University of 

 Manitoba. I therefore collected as many fresh fruit-bodies of 

 P. stypticus as possible and took them into a dark-room when my 

 eyes were well rested ; but not even after remaining with them in 

 the dark for half an hour could I detect the least sign of light coming 

 from the gills. Dr. Bisby confirmed this negative observation. When 

 giving my paper I was therefore obliged to announce that the 

 EngUsh specimens of P. stypticus, so far as my experience had gone, 

 behave very differently from North American ones in that they are 

 non-luminous. Subsequently, using five other collections made at 

 Keswick, I found that the fruit-bodies were uniformly dark in a 

 dark-room : no sign of light was emitted from any of their gills. 



After hearing my paper at Keswick, Dr. Corner attempted to 

 make photographs with his Great Missenden specimens in the same 

 manner as I had done with fruit-bodies gathered in North America, 

 but without success. He laid about twenty fruit-bodies over the 

 sensitive film of a photographic plate in the dark and left them for 



1 E. M. Johnson, " On the Biology of Panus stypticvs," Trans. Brit. Myc. Soc, 

 vol. vi, 1920, p. 348. 



2 In litt. ^ Communicated in person. * In litt. 



