334 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



feet away from the gun's mouth. Miss Dorothy Newton and W. F. 

 Hanna kindly assisted me in observing the place of fall of each 

 projectile and in measuring the horizontal distance to which each 

 projectile had been discharged. 



About a dozen projectiles were discharged. Several of them 

 fell between 10 and 12 feet from the mouths of the guns. This 

 relatively short distance may have been due to the guns having 

 been less vigorous than others, to their having been vigorous but 

 not sufficiently matured at the moment of their discharge, or to the 

 angle of discharge having been either too great or too small. 



The four greatest horizontal distances of discharge were as 

 follows : 



No. 1 ..... 18 feet 7 inches 

 No. 2 . . . . .16 feet 4 inches 



No. 3 16 feet 6 inches 



No. 4 . . . . .16 feet 5 inches 



Up to the present 1 8 feet 7 inches is a world record for horizontal 

 distance in fungus gunnery. 



The inner everting membranes of one of the fruit-bodies which 

 was about to discharge its projectile were dissected away from the 

 non-everting membranes and held lightly between the first finger 

 and thumb of the left hand at an angle of about 40° with the 

 horizontal. A very slight pressure given with the right hand with 

 the head of a pin and applied to the base of the little cup set the 

 everting process in motion, with the result that the projectile was 

 discharged to a horizontal distance of 13 feet 6 inches. This experi- 

 ment affords further evidence that the force of the discharge of the 

 Sphaerobolus gun resides in the inner everting peridial membranes 

 only. 



When a culture dish which stood on a table in the laboratory 

 was uncovered so that the fruit-bodies looked freely upwards, one 

 of them discharged its projectile with such force that the projectile 

 struck the ceiling about 7 feet above the dung. The impact of the 

 projectile with one of the metal plates of the ceiling was so violent 

 that it was readily heard by both myself and others and the pro- 

 jectile bounced back to the table again where it fell on to a glass 



