168 SEXUAL REPRODUCTION IN THE MUCORINI. 



The phenomena of copulation in Ehrenberg's celebrated Syzygites 

 megalocarpus offers the same essential characteristics as in the 

 Rhizopus, as I have elsewhere shown in detail ; * the structure of 

 the ripe zygospores is also the same in the two plants. In Syzygites, 

 however, the copulative cells and the suspenders do not habitually 

 differ in volume in any sensible manner, and the generative clavules 

 are formed between the branches of an upright, and regularly bi — 

 or — trichotomous carpophore. I have also observed in the Syzygites 

 a fact which the Rhizopus has never presented to me — the copulative 

 cells of the former often cover the whole structure of the cells 

 without uniting to each other, and then constitute what might be 

 called azygospores. The germination of the zygospores and azy- 

 gospores has hitherto been observed only in the Syzygites. If, after 

 a certain time of repose, these bodies are placed in a moist sub- 

 stratum, they emit a germ-like tube like the spores, with hard and 

 resisting sides, and this germ, without giving birth to a proper 

 mycelium, developes at the expense of the nutritive materials stored 

 in the zygospore, into an arbuscle or carpophore, which is branched 

 bichotomously many times, charged with terminal sporangia charac- 

 teristic of the species. 



NOTES ON THE ABOVE. 

 By M. M. TuLAsxE.f 



In the chronological order of observations and discoveries re- 

 lative to this subject, the fungi which demand to be first quoted 

 are the moulds, for it is amongst them that M. Ehrenberg's 

 Syzygites megalocarpus is grouped. Until lately the remarkable 

 phenomenon of copulation presented by this plant appeared to 

 belong to it alone, and there was no analogy in the vegetable king- 

 dom except with the conjugation of certain fresh- water Alga3. 

 M. M. A. Janowitsch and de Bary discovered that Rhizopus 

 nigricans, Ehb., also possesses zygospores, \ and have thus once 

 more, though indirectly, demonstrated that Ehrenberg's celebrated 

 fungus is in all respects a true Fungus mucoreus. 



The opinion formerly § expressed by us that Aspergillus maximus 

 Lk. (Sporodinia grandis) is only one of the forms of Syzygites megalo- 

 carpus Ehb. has been fully confirmed by the observations of M. M. 



* "Beitrage zur Morphologie und Physiologie der Pilze," part i. (1864) 

 p. 74, &c. 



f Translated from Annates des Sciences Naturelles. 5th Series (Oct., 1866), p. 

 211. Bv the Editor. 



| De Bary. Beitr. zur Morph. und Phys. der Pilze, pt. 2 (1866), p. 28. 



§ Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Sciences. Vol. 41 (1855), p. 617. 



