COPRINUS PLICATILIS 



57 



verticality of the gills in question. If such powdered gills during 

 the spore-discharge period had been subjected to the process of 

 autodigestion as in other Coprini, the spores which fell on to their 

 upper sides might have escaped freely from the fruit-body. We 



Fig. 35. — Coprinuslongijjes. Three young 

 fruit-bodies coming up spontaneously 

 on old horse-dung in a laboratory 

 culture at Winnipeg. One of them 

 is expanding its pileus. The unex- 

 panded pilei were brown. Natural size. 



Fig. 36. — Coprinus longi2jes. 

 Three fruit-bodies with rather 

 short stipes and fully ex- 

 panded pilei on horse dung 

 coming up spontaneously in 

 a laboratory culture at Winni- 

 peg. The pilei, like those of 

 C. plicatilis, are broadly con- 

 vex, radially plicate, and de- 

 pressed at the disc. Natural 

 size. 



thus perceive that in C. plicatilis the absence of autodigestion is 

 a disadvantage to the working of the fruit-body mechanism, but 

 not a very serious one ; for, even with this handicap, most of the 

 spores escape from the pileus and are carried off by the wind. The 

 pileus of C. curtus, in opening out like a parasol prior to the beginning 

 of spore-discharge, resembles that of C. plicatilis and, if its gills 

 ceased to undergo autodigestion during the spore-discharge period, 

 it is not improbable that, like the pileus of C. plicatilis, it would 



