THE SPHAEROBOLUS GUN 



281 



o 



and that force, too, exerted in defiance of considerable resistance, 

 seems to surpass the power of 

 an}' theory to account for satis- 

 factorily." A century has rolled 

 by since Greville made those 

 remarks and it is only in recent 

 years, with the help of modern 

 histological and biochemical methods, 

 that it has been possible to explain 

 the mechanism of the Sphaero- 

 bolus gun with any 

 degree of complete- 

 ness and finality. f'""' % \ ° -- 



In 1884, E.Fischer 1 

 gave a detailed ac- 

 count of the structure 

 and development of 

 the Sphaerobolus 



fruit -body and a 

 general explanation 

 of the mechanism by 

 which the ball of 

 spores is shot away. 

 He concluded from 

 his minute investi- 

 gations that Sphaero- 

 bolus belongs not 

 to the Nidulariineae, 

 as was formerly 

 believed, but to the 

 Plectobasidiineae, 

 and that the fun- 

 gus is therefore 

 more closely allied 

 to Scleroderma and 



Fig. 136. — Miclieli's illustration of Sphaerobolus McUa- 

 tus (his Carpobolns). A, part of a drawing showing 

 two fruit-bodies much enlarged on a stick ; the 

 fruit-body on the left, in section, exhibits the two 

 layers of the stellate peridium bearing a glebal 

 projectile shortly before discharge ; in the fruit- 

 body on the right the inner layer of the peridium 

 has suddenly become everted and has shot away 

 the projectile in the direction indicated by the 

 broken line. B, fruit-bodies on a piece of wood, 

 natural size ; the broken lines indicate the direct ion 

 of flight of several glebal projectiles. C, spores 

 from the interior of the projectile. Copied by 

 A. H. R. Buller from Plate 86 of Micheli's Nova 

 Plantarum Genera (1729). 



Tulostoma than to Crucibulum and 



1 E. Fischer, "Die Entwicklungsgeschichto der Gastromyceten," Botanische 

 Zcitima, Bd. XL1I, 1884, Xos. 28-31, pp. 433-443, 449-462. 4G5-470. 



