64 REPRODUCTION IN COPKINUS UADIATUS. 



others. In the case of Peronospora infestans, because De Bary 

 said the resting spores were not likely to be found in the Potato 

 plant, itwas almost universally accepted as a fact that they never 

 could be there found. Because conidia had not been described, it 

 was commonly believed that no conidia existed. The mycelium of 

 Peronospora has till lately been described as always destitute of 

 suckers^ but in some of the Chiswick plants the suckers were abun- 

 dant. The same fungus is commonly described as having its 

 threads without articulations or septa, but it is equally common to 

 see the figures of this fungus with septa in profusion. 



Many botanists, as Corda, Bulliard, Klotzsch, and others, have 

 considered the cystidium in Agaricus to correspond in some way 

 with an anthcridium, but as these views have not at present been 

 favoured by Tulasne and De Bary, many botanists seem disposed to 

 agree with De Bary in regarding the cystids as mei'e " pilose pro- 

 ductions of a particular order," which is very indefinite, and the 

 granules as mere conidia (Tulasne). Klotzsch and others have 

 considered it possible that the spores are fecundated by a lubricat- 

 ing fluid given out by the cystidia. This fluid is evidently the 

 same with the threads observed by me, and which at length gives 

 birth to spermatozoids. I consider it quite possible that the mere 

 contact of the threads (or fluid) from the cystidia with the threads 

 from the unpierced spores may be sufficient for the production of 

 a new plant. But De Bary, in criticising Klotzsch, says an opinion 

 of this nature is entirely gratuitous, and the contact and its result, 

 if real, would represent nutrition rather than fecundation, and, as 

 far as he knows, there exists, he says, no other observation on any 

 female organ susceptible of fecundation by the cystidia. I cannot 

 fall in with De Bary 's views at all, especially after the analogy 

 found in Fucus and in the confervoid pollen (which has no outer 

 coat), and whicli exhibits rotation in the flowering plants found 

 under Zostera, Phucagrostes, &c., and which are fecundated when 

 in a state of immersion in water. 



As regards the spores of woody species of fungi, they are pro- 

 bably fertilised on the parent plant, and are blown away by the 

 wind in a condition suitable to at once form the first cell of a new 

 plant on any proper habitat. If Agarics were perennial and per- 

 sistent, instead of being annual and fugitive, we might expect to 

 see a new hymenium produced each year upon the lower surface of 

 the old one, and this state of things really does exist in many 

 species belonging to the perennial and persistent woody fungi of 

 trees, where a new stratum of tubes is every year produced under- 

 neath the old one, so that the age of the fungus in years may be 

 correctly ascertained by merely counting the strata. As to the 

 mycelium itself, and the possibility of its producing sexual organs 

 in Agaricus, I have had the subject before me for many years, and 

 have seen many germinating spores, but no trace of any sexual 

 organ other than the spermatozoids as produced from the cystidia 



