90 



THE SAPROLEGNIACEAE 



On an ant in distilled water. Good, but rather small growth, many sporangia, no eggs and 



few gemmae. 

 On corn meal agar. Good growth and many fine gemmae, three or four oogonia were found, 



the eggs not very normal looking and some going to pieces. 



The following experiments were made to determine the best method 

 of preserving live cultures : 



Culture (No i of January 15, 1913) put in vial on corn meal agar on March 18, 1913. and 



was found to be dead December i, 1913. 

 Culture (No. I of January 15, 1913) was put in jar on March 3, 1913. Test for life was 



made September 18, 1917, by dropping in mushroom grub, but no growth appeared. 



PROTOACHLYA n. genus 



This genus is established on a species collected at Chapel Hill and 

 previously described as Achlya. It may be defined as follows: 



Hyphae more delicate than in Achlya; sporangia subcylindrical to 

 clavate or flask-shaped, blunt and usually thickest beyond the middle, 

 proliferating like a cyme, as in Achlya, and also less frequently by growth 

 through the empty sporangia, as in Saprolegnia. Spores diplanetic, on 

 emerging ciliated and all or some showing sluggish or less often active 

 motion, some remaining attached in an irregular clump to the tip of the 

 sporangium. Oogonia borne singly, the great majority on short lateral 

 stalks from the main hyphae and with or without a few pits; eggs usually 

 few, centric. Antheridia androgynous or diclinous, typically pyriform 

 with their tips applied to the oogonia. Gemmae spherical to pyriform or 

 elongated. Vegetative behavior not noticeably difi'erent from other gen- 

 era. 



The genus is of great interest as indicating a possible common an- 

 cestor of several existing groups. It seems almost exactly intermediate 

 between Saprolegnia and Achlya. The genus normally exhibits not only 

 characters of several genera, but combines what have been considered 

 antithetic characters, as both cymose and inter-sporangial proliferation 

 of sporangia and motile and motionless spores on emerging. When Achlya 

 paradoxa was first described (Mycologia 6: 285. 1914) we were reluctant 

 to introduce a new genus based on one species, and so retained it'm Achlya, 

 with considerable violence to the elasticity of that genus. Further study 

 of the species has convinced us that it should be separated from Achlya. 

 Kauffman ('21, p. 231) transfers it to Isoachlya, but this we feel sure is a 

 mistake. 



Protoachlya differs from Achlya in the motility of some or all of the 

 spores on emerging, the not infrequent internal proliferation of the 

 sporangia and their thick rounded tips, the presence of spherical or pyriform 



