REPRODUCTION IN COPRINUS EADIATUS. 63 



species of Agaricus similar forms are quite common, and they 

 prove sore puzzles for those men who only want names for the 

 fungi they find. I am convinced that at least three-fourths of the 

 described species of the higher fuagi have no claim to rank as true 

 species, and that plants like Agaricus procerus, A. rachodes, and 

 A. excoriatns, A. gracilentus, with others, are mere forms of one 

 and the same plant with every intermediate link. 



Van Tieghem has recently been working on this species, and he 

 has arrived at the conclusion that the fungus produces spores of 

 different sexes. But to me it is quite unreasonable to imagine 

 seeds or spores to be of different sexes. Known facts point quite 

 in the opposite direction, and if sex is once allowed in seeds and 

 spores, then we must be prepared to allow sex in pollen and sper- 

 matozoids. A spore or ovule must be considered female, whilst un- 

 fecundated or still in the ovary, but when once fertilised it combines 

 both sexes, and cannot be other then hermaphrodite. A secondary 

 colour, as orange (which combines the red and yellow primaries), 

 can never be red or yellow. In dioecious plants the seeds are 

 capable of producing either sex, and are not themselves male or 

 female, and even the great fleshy root-stock of Bryonia dioica will 

 be male in one place, and if removed to a different position be 

 female. The Rev. M. J. Berkeley, writing of Coprinus {Gardeners' 

 Chvnicle, April 17, 1875, p. 503), says — "Late examinations of 

 the spores of some Coprinus under germination seem to show that 

 impregnation takes place at a very early period." 



Now my observations show that this impregnation often actually 

 takes place on the hymenium itself, the product being a single cell, 

 which in the species now described rapidly developes into a new in- 

 dividual. The spore and spermatozoid may be considered as some- 

 what analogous with an ovule and a pollen grain, or with what is 

 seen in Chara ; or like the escaped oosphore and spermatozoids in 

 Fucus amongst the Algaj. 



. I cannot attach much importance to ffirsted's interesting paper 

 on the fructification of the Agaricini. His notes are on Agaricus 

 variabilis, a plant he gathered from a Mushroom bed. Now, as far 

 as my experience goes, A. variabilis is peculiar to dead stems, 

 sticks, and leaves, and does not grow upon dung. Moreover 

 CErsted experimented upon threads of mycelium taken from dung, 

 and presumed only to belong to this Agaricus ; but this mycelium 

 was quite as likely, in my opinion, to have belonged to fifty other 

 things. De Bary, speaking of Oersted's observation says — " It is 

 impossible not to perceive the similitude between the phenomena 

 seen by M. ffirsted and those I have described in Peziza con- 

 Jluens." It is quite doubtful whether or not (Ersted had got the 

 mycelium of some dung-borne Peziza for his experiments, as 

 P. vesiculosa, which is always present on dung-heaps. 



In the observation of natural phenomenon it is never well to 

 follow, without thought and original observation, in the footsteps of 



