24 Professor Marshall Ward [Feb. 24, 



spores of the fungi are, no one seems to have observed their import- 

 ance until Micheli, in 1729, collected and sowed a series of them, and 

 with results, for he obtained mycelia, and in a few cases even sporo- 

 phores ; but it was not until a century later, 1820, that Ehrenberg, in 

 his classical " De Mycetogenesi," traced the larger fungi to their my- 

 celial filaments, collected and sowed spores, and grew several species 

 of Moulds, and especially discovered the sexual act in Zyzygites. For 

 although Micheli's ideas had been confirmed by Gleditsch in 175^ 

 and by Schaeffer in 1762, Rudolphi and Persoon had more or less 

 denied the germination of spores, and insisted on the spontaneous 

 generation of the moulds. 



However, before 1840 Nees von Esenbeck had cultivated a Mucor 

 from spore to spore, and Dutrochet, 1834, and Trog, 1837, had seen 

 the " puffing " of asci, and practically established the doctrine of 

 wind-distribution of spores. 



By these and similar successes the era of the Mould-fungi was 

 initiated, and the labours of Corda, Tulasne, Prigsheim, Cohn, and 

 De Bary soon introduced system into their study, and especially the 

 exact study of life-histories showed what important results for morpho- 

 logy lay in the biological investigations of these micro-fungi. 



The lecturer here gave illustrations of the commoner types of 

 mould fungi, with notes on their botanical importance, and some 

 remarks on the points he wished to emphasise later. 



An early outcome of the investigations of the moulds and their 

 allies was the discovery of what curious substrata some of them grow 

 upon. A rapid survey of all saprophytic fungi shows that while the 

 majority grow on the soil, on plant remains, or on dung of various 

 kinds, peculiar forms or species occur on such bodies as resin, cork, 

 bees' and wasps' nests, bones, limestone, insect-remains, horn, hair, 

 feathers and hoofs, fats, and in chemical solutions such as picric acid, 

 copper sulphate, arsenic, and poisons such as atropin, muscarin, and 

 so forth. 



Here, also, the lecturer gave some notes on details, of which the 

 most striking was, perhaps, his own proof that the horn-destroying 

 fungus Oiiygena will not act until its spores have been passed through 

 the alimentary tract of an animal, or subjected to the influence of 

 gastric juice. 



In 1866, the year of publication of De Bary's book on mycology, 

 a revolution in the study of fungi was brought about by the first 

 morphological proof of parasitism and infection, and the clear distinc- 

 tion drawn ])etween the saprophytic micro-fungi or "moulds" and 

 the parasitic fungi which induce " diseases." The matter was of 

 especial importance as explaining away prevalent erroneous ideas ac- 

 cording to which these disease-fungi were outgrowths {exanthemata) 

 from the moriljund tissues of the host-plant itself. 



De Bary's great service was to prove that a spore of a fungus 

 arrived from outside, and, after germinating on the leaf or other 



