82 JOURNAL OF THE [July> 



were dead. I was hampered with the smallness of the speci- 

 mens, and the extreme limitation of material, and the fact that I 

 did not succeed in getting a growing slide. As to the size and 

 transparency of these fungi, it was observable that though the 

 fish for a while before and after death were ashen white wher- 

 ever the fungus had attacked, yet upon being dried, the natural 

 dark color of the skin returned, and the fungus seemed to have 

 gone off in the air. 



Mounted specimens were sent to several eminent fungologists, 

 two of whom, to my surprise, ventured the guess that they were 

 allied to the Saprolegnice. This surmise could only come from 

 the fact of similarity of habitat. A mount was sent to the 

 distinguished specialist. Dr. M. C. Cooke, who wrote that he 

 failed to find the specimen on the slide ; which was to me quite 

 a disappointment. 



Speaking generally these minute plants are funnel-formed, 

 though the short quasi-stem ends in an imperforate point. 

 Hence a friend on viewing them in the microscope called them 

 little cornucopias. But these tiny wine-glasses with no bottoms 

 or supports, how are they to stand up ? A funnel or cornucopia 

 could be made to stand erect, if the bottom were stuck in the 

 ground. It really seems that it is the way this fungus secures 

 attachment by the imperforate point or end penetrating the epi- 

 dermis of the fish. As these are so close together their upper 

 parts, when a patch is put in the microscope, present the appear- 

 ance of a plane of scales, instead of the cottony fiocci of the 

 Saprolegniiv ; sometimes these little cups are so crowded or 

 squeezed that instead of presenting to the eye looking down the 

 instrument upon them a plane of circles, they have the aspect of 

 polygonals. 



As to the fungus attaching itself by the point of its short stem, 

 the little bend or curve sometimes suggestive of a hook, might 

 perhaps, from the vast numbers in a series, serve as a multiple 

 holdfast. But the usual economy of a fungus is an apparatus of 

 rootlets or rhizCid mycelia. As I have been unable to detect 

 such a holdfast may not its cup-like thallus suggest hair-like 

 surroundings of the pointed base of the plant, each rhizoidal 

 hair with a cup-like ending or sucker, not unlike the attachment 

 of Einpusa muscce, the fly fungus on the window pane; for though 



