SEXUAL REPRODUCTION IN THE MUOORINI. 1 GO 



Schacht* and de Bary "j* so that the latter no longer hesitates to 

 quality M. Ehrenberg'a fungus as Mucor Syzygites, and associates 

 with it not only Rkizopus nigricans, Ehr., or Mucor stolonifer, Ehr., 



and Mucor mucedo, Fres., but also Phycomyces nitens, Kze., and 

 Mucor macrocarpus, Corda, and Mucor fksiger, Lk. 



We shall be careful not to criticise these associations, especially 

 after having stated, as we have done this year, that the zygospores 

 show themselves not only in Mucor Syzygites and M. stolonifer, 

 but also in M. fusiger. We have met with this latter species finer 

 and larger than all the others in the woods of Chaville, near 

 Versailles ; it was living on Agaricus fusipes, Bull., which was 

 decayed and partly destroyed. Its mycelium is remarkable in that 

 some of its branches, stronger and more rigid than the others, bear 

 small short spiniform divergent branchlets ill imperfect verticels 

 close together. The hyphasma in contact with the nourishing 

 substratum, or buried within it, is a very dense anastomosing net- 

 work, which in aspect and habit are quite different from the 

 branched filaments, barely separate and very unequal, which con- 

 stitute the upright fertile tufts of the Mucor. The spores, which 

 are formed in great numbers in each terminal conceptacle, are 

 oblong-oval, and rather unequilateral, not less than •032--035 X 

 •017--019 m.m. in size.J 



The globular zygospores measure about "18--2 m. m. in diameter ; 

 they are very brown, almost black, but instead of presenting a 

 verucose surface, like the zygospores of Mucor Syzygites and M. 

 stolonifer they are only finely striated, and one would say that 

 their membrane was composed of very thin bands in juxtaposition. 

 It is not rare to find two of them soldered together. Under their 

 exterior or striated tegument, which is only the membrane of the 

 conjugated cells from whence they come, two smooth coats which 

 are slightly tinted with a brownish colour can be distinguishe I. 

 The middle coat, which is easily exposed, is a very thick mem- 

 brane of horny appearance, which imbibes water and speedily softens. 



* See " Gazette de Cologne" of 1st June, 1864, for the account of the meeting 

 held at Bonn on the previous 7th April by the Societe de medecine et d'hist. Nat. 

 du Bas-Bhin. M. Schacht was. unable to assure Hmself positively that the 

 zygospores of the Syzygites were produced upon the identical mycelium which 

 bears the fertile cymes of Sporodiniagrandis, Lk., but he has seen that the germ 

 filament which these zygospores issue in spring divides into dichototnons branches 

 terminated by conceptacles which are exactly like, those of Sporodiaia, provided 

 with an abundant mycelium. 



t The principal observations of M. de Bary on the Syzifgites were also pub- 

 lished in 1864 (Beitr. z. Morph. u. Phys. der Pilze i., p. 74—88). They agn e 

 entirely with those of M. Schacht. In sowing the ascogenous spores of the 

 8porodinia M. de Bary obtained a mycelium as fertile in conceptaculiferous 

 cymes as in zygospores, but he observed that habitually the two sorts of fructifi- 

 cation arise from different, or more or less distiuct filaments, although theM are 

 the issue of the same mycelium ; he therefore declares that there is perhaps no 

 fungoid species more fit than the Syzygites to demonstrate the presence oi 

 genders of fruit in one and the same fungus. 



X These dimensions are less than those indicated by M. de Bary, accordiug to 

 whom the spores of Mucor fusiger, Lk., measure "05 X 012 m.m. 



