134 



RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



or oval lumps of considerable size piled together, is also an obvious 

 factor in fixation ; for it provides the crevice or recess in which a 



favoured rudiment 

 may begin its develop- 

 ment and then, by 

 the mutual opposition 

 of its parts, presses 

 against the sides of 

 the stipe-base so that 

 the latter becomes 

 firmly wedged in be- 

 tween the dung-balls, 

 between or through 

 which it has grown 

 upwards. The very 

 base or first-formed 

 part of the stipe-base 

 is attached to the 

 myceUum within a 

 dung-ball and to the 

 myceUal stratum, with 

 its mycelial strands, 

 which clothes the ex- 

 terior of the dung-ball. 

 The shaft of the stipe- 

 base, which may be 

 from • 5 to 4 cm. long, 

 according to the dis- 

 tance upwards through 

 which the stipe-base 

 grows to bring the rudi- 

 mentary pileus into the 



Fig. 70. — Panaeolus canipanulatus. A fruit-body 

 which came up in a mass of horse dung in the 

 laboratory. It arose between two dung-balls in 

 a dark crevice. Probably any fruit-body rudi- 

 ments that appeared on the upper sides of the 

 dung- balls were inhibited from further growth 

 by the action of light. Owing to its low place 

 of origin, the stipe was well fixed mechanically 

 between the two dung-balls. Horse-dung balls 

 collected at Haslemere, England. Photographed 

 in the laboratory at Winnipeg. Natural size. 



Hght, is held laterally 

 by the before-mentioned mutual pressure of opposing dung-balls, 

 etc. Thus, the whole stipe-base becomes fixed within the sub- 

 stratum in a most effective manner. Its hold upon the dung is 

 doubtless rendered all the more complete by the densely packed 



