EREMASCACEAE IMPERFECTAE 197 



in his Mycologia Europaea, 1822, without comment. Saccardo (1886) recognized the genus, 

 placing the earth-inliabiting species in Eugeotrichum and the coprophilous species in Copro- 

 trichum-. 



Loubiere (1924) has revived it in connection with his studies of organisms in cheese. 



MYCODERMA 



Mycoderma Persoon, Mycologia Europaea 1: 96, 97, 1822. 



The type species is Mycoderma mesentericum Persoon. 



The genus was first described as " orMculare, coriiforme, primo molle, suhpellucidum 

 dein induratum, sulstantia uhvque aequali (Aspemvum? natura MuccdinumJ." It included 

 four species evidently forming pellicles on various sugar-containing liquids. M. mesentericum-, 

 from a bottle imp of wine, produced a folded white, viscous pellicle; it had been 

 previously described but not named in Persoon, Traite des Champignons ComestiUes 8, 1818. 

 M. lagenae, also from wine, was smooth, obsoletely rugose below, and reddish. M. ollare 

 on a decoction of Bumex acetosella produced a deeply folded, fuscous to bay, rather fragile 

 pellicle. M. pergameneum produced a thin white pellicle with a rough surface. 



While I have been unable to locate a copy of the work, Demazieres in his Catalogue des 

 plantes omises dans la hotanographie helgique et les flores du nord de la France, Lille 1823, 

 is said to have renamed M. mesentericum and M. lagenae as M. vini (p. 13) and described 

 M. cerevisine (p. 13). Shortly thereafter he issued his Plantes cryptogames du nord de la 

 France [probably a collection of specimens with descriptive labels, but not seen] in which 

 No. 101 was M. cerevisiae, No. 102 was M. malti-juniperini, described as new, and No. 103 

 was his M. vini. By 1825 he had prepared cultures of this genus by exposing shallow dishes 

 of beer, wine, etc., to the air and produced several cultures with pellicles. These he studied 

 microscopically and finding flagellates as well as fungus filaments, confused the litera- 

 ture for a long time by trying to fit them into a single life cycle. This was published as his 

 Observations hotaniques et soologiques, Rec. Trav. Soc. Amateurs Sci. Agr. Arts Lille 1825: 

 1826 [the portion on Mycoderma reprinted in Ann. Sci. Nat. I, 10: 42-67, PI. 3 1827]. In 

 this work he recognizes M. cerevisiae, M. nnalti- cerevisiae, M. malti-juniperini, M. vini, M. 

 glutinis-farinulae, and M. vini Vallot (Bibl. phys. econ. aout 1822). A study of Desmazieres' 

 figures shows that he was not working with pure cultures. M. m-alti-juniperini seems to be made 

 up of filaments dissociating into cylindric cells such as are found in the milk organism, 

 Geotrichum lactis. M. vini is mostly bacterial? with some dichotomous hyphae, rather sparingly 

 septate and sterile; M. glutinis-farinulae is a branched moniliform chain of ellipsoid cells, 

 while M. cerevisiae is made up of cells which may belong to as many as four different organ- 

 isms: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Geotrichum lactis, a species with septate, dichotomous, sterile 

 hyphae, and branched chains of moniliform cells similar to M. glutinis-farinulae but much 

 smaller. 



From the preceding discussion it seems clear that Mycoderma should be retained for 

 organisms forming a viscous pellicle on the surface of solutions rich in sugars. During the 

 rest of the nineteenth century various heterogeneous elements were included in this genus. 

 According to Jannin (1913) Vuillemin decided to typify the genus by M. malti-juniperini, 

 being either ignorant of, or ignoring, the earlier description of both Persoon and Desmazieres, 

 and thus fixing the name as a synonym of Oidium lactis Fresenius (since shown to belong in 

 Geotrichum). Most French writers have followed Vuillemin blindly. Enlows (1920) would 

 typify the genus by M. ollare, since it is tlie first on the page on which Mycoderma was 

 described. 



In the brewing and wine industry, the tradition has been strong to make M. vini and 

 M. cerevisiae the typical species of the group, although they have been differently character- 

 ized by different workers. Unfortunately they have been more interested in the products of 

 fermentation than in the agents involved, so that much important information lies buried in a 

 mass of fermentation studies. Leberle (1909) and Will (1910) illustrate this tradition, and 



