BOTANY. 687 



results have been published in the Bot. Zeitung. An examination of liv- 

 ing material and of dried specimens including those in Ravenel's Fungi 

 Caroliniani shows that tbe genus is not related to JEcidium as some have 

 supposed, although it is not easy to say in what order of fungi Graphiola 

 should be placed. The Proc. Royal Society contain two papers by Flow- 

 right ; in one Mahonia aquifolia is stated to be a propagator of the wheat 

 mildew, the aecidium, of which appears abundantly on Mahonia in some 

 places in England where the more common secidium on barberry is scanty 

 or quite wanting ; the second paper is on the Life History of the Bock 

 JEcidium, which he asserts is connected with Puccinia arundinacea D. C. 

 The discussion between Pringsheim and De Bary in regard to the de- 

 tails of the fertilization in Saprolegniecs has been continued this year. 

 The first named botanist has twice referred to the subject. In the Bot. 

 Gentralblalt he replies sharply to the criticisms of Zopf concerning the 

 supposed amoebae in the tubes and oogonia of Saprolegnice. The other 

 paper appeared in Pringsheirn's Jahrbuecher, where he reaffirms his 

 views in opposition to the apogamic nature of the spores in some species 

 of Achlya. In the Bot. Zeitung of January, De Bary reiterates his be- 

 lief in the apogamic character of the reproduction and denies the validity 

 of Pringsheirn's views. The Centralbiatt has a paper by Zalewski on 

 the reproduction in Cystopus followed by a description of the species of 

 the genus ; Baiunier in the Ann. Sci. Nat. has two papers on Mucorini in 

 one of which he gives a detailed account of the conditions which affect 

 the production of zygospores, while the other is an abridgment of the 

 author's larger work on the subject. In his Apercu systcmatiquc des chy- 

 tridiacecs in the Arch. Bot. du Nord, Sorokiu gives an account of the 

 species of the order known to him more especially, however, those ex- 

 amined by him in Russia and the East. Hermann Hesse in an inaugural 

 thesis discusses the systematic value of the anatomical structure of the 

 gills in Agaricini without, however, arriving at any very satisfactory 

 results. A contribution to our knowledge of the lower forms of Myxo 

 mycetes is found in a paper by Fayoel in Bot, Zeitung where he gives 

 the development of Guttulino protea, The mechanism of the discharge 

 of the spores in ascomycetts has been studied by Zopf who, in Zeitschrift 

 naturwissenschaft Halle, describes and figures in full the process which 

 takes place in several Sordarke where by an expansion of the proto- 

 plasm behind the spore at the tip of the ascus, the spore is violently 

 ejected and the ascus closed afterwards. Eidam in (John's Beitrage 

 zur Biologie has a paper ou the development of ascomycetes, as shown 

 by species of Sterigmatocystis, of which some new and curious forms are 

 described. In one instance an ascus is formed by the union of two 

 similar spiral hyphre. At the end of the paper is a reply to some of Bre- 

 feld's views on reproduction in this group. 



The papers treating of American species of fungi have been unusually 

 numerous. The 33d and 34th Reports of the New York State Museum 

 include descriptions and figures of a large number of fungi new to the 



