72 JOURNAL OF THE [lul)' 



tained oospheres. It gently touches this little spherical mass of 

 naked protoplasm, the nucleus of which coalesces with the im- 

 ported gonoplasm. The oosphere now takes on a covering, and 

 thus becomes a cell, and is endowed with a peculiar life force, 

 and is recognized as an oospore. It is complete, and for its own 

 species, the ultimate or highest possible productive spore. As 

 such, though perhaps indefinite, it has an advantage over the 

 zoospore, and with this superiority it starts on its own career. 

 As to that little fertilizing organism, because of its likeness in 

 function to that of the anther in a flower, it is called an anther- 

 idium. 



One must feel assured that this complexity of mechanism is 

 not a superfluity of nature. In the long run this organic inter- 

 relation is indispensable to the continuance of the species in its 

 normal integrity, yet these lowly plants are possessed of a 

 marvelous plasticity of accommodation to the situation of 

 circumstance. The Saproleo^nia can be a saprophyte, that is, a 

 dweller on some inorganic thing, a stick or a stone. But it only 

 revels in its life role as a parasite, its host being a living thing. 

 So for a while there seems at times an arrest, or break in the 

 process of development. The symbiosis of the brood-sac is 

 dispensed with, and the simple sporangium capsule with its mo- 

 tile spores is made to suffice. The play of life is for the oc- 

 casion gone through, with the prince left out, or perhaps the 

 metaphor is more apposite, the establishment while awaiting 

 developments is content to graduate sophomores. 



A fungus, as we are now considering it, is a vegetative body 

 without stem or leaf, and such a body, not reckoning the parts 

 necessary for fructification, is called a thallus. This is com- 

 posed of cylindrical threads or filaments which sometimes 

 branch. They are really tubular membranes filled with 

 protoplasm, and growing or lengthening at the apical end. 

 Each thread may be called a hypha, while a mycelium may 

 consist of one or more hyphte. As the hypha lengthens septate 

 divisions occuf in the tube, thus separating it into cylindrical 

 cells ; and these may become spore-sacs, the top one developing 

 first. 



The saprolegnia mold is usually a floccus of straight threads, 

 standing out like hair. Noticing in some fungus just taken 



