COPRINUS CURTUS 9 



by means of steam applied at atmospheric pressure for one hour. 

 The spores, doubtless, were of diverse sex, so that after the spores 

 germinated monosporous mycelia of opposite sex fused together 

 and soon produced a diploid myceHum. After this mycehum had 

 been growing through the dung-balls for about a week, the balls 

 were sent to the late Professor G. F. Atkinson at Cornell University. 

 The mycehum then fruited, and Professor Atkinson kindly sent me 

 the photographs of the fruit-bodies here reproduced. 



The fruit-bodies produced in polysporous cultures on fresh 

 sterilised horse dung are usually, although perhaps not always, 

 distinctly larger than those which come up spontaneously on un- 

 sterilised dung-balls. In this connexion the reader should compare 

 Fig. 1 (p. 3), which shows wild fruit-bodies of about average size, 

 with Figs. 3 (p. 7), 4 (p. 8), 5 (p. 10), and 8 (p. 14), which show 

 cultivated fruit-bodies. The largest wild fruit-bodies so far met 

 with are shown in Fig. 2 (p. 5). 



Fruit-bodies rendered Sterile by Fumes from Fresh Manure. — 

 In a large glass case (3 feet long, 1-5 feet wide, and 2 feet high), 

 one-half of the floor was covered by horse-dung balls which were 

 two or three weeks old and which had produced and were producing 

 many normal fruit-bodies of Coprinvs curtus. Into this chamber 

 there was introduced a mass of new horse dung sufficient to cover 

 the other half of the floor, and then the door of the case was shut 

 tightly. Two days later a considerable number of C. curtus fruit- 

 bodies came up on the old dung and expanded ; but, instead of 

 becoming grey with ripened spores, they all remained pale and were 

 partially or wholly sterile. There can be but little doubt that this 

 sterility was due to the effect of fumes given off by the fresh horse 

 dung.^ 



Synonyms. — Coprinus curtus, although a fairly common fungus, 

 was not described by Fries, Berkeley, Stevenson, Massee. or Cooke 

 and, for some years after becoming well acquainted with the fungus, 



1 I have also observed that, when the spores of Pilobolus longipes have been 

 sown on a mass of fresh sterilised horse dung contained in a glass crystallising dish 

 tightly closed by a glass plate, many of the fruit -bodies — which come up in an 

 atmosphere containing gases derived from the dung — are abnormal in form and 

 colour. Some of the sporangia fail to develop their black pigment and then the 

 orange-coloured spores can be seen en masse through the colourless sporangium-wall. 



