MOULDS EEFERRED BY AUTHORS TO FUMAGO. 247 



being occupied with tiiese forms, led, as said above, to a com- 

 plete revision of our materials, and we have great pleasure in 

 acknowledging our obligations to our excellent friend. This 

 genus has been published, under the name of Cap?iodium, in the 

 ' Annals of Natural History' for the present year; and though 

 perhaps we should have preferred the retention of Persoon's 

 name, we cheerfully adopt that which has been proposed by Dr. 

 Montague, which is altogether unobjectionable. 



These plants, then, consist of a creeping thallus or mycelium 

 composed of moniliform threads resembling those ofAnteti?ia?na, 

 or, as in that genus, occasionally to a greater or less extent 

 mixed with filaments not at all constricted at the articulations. 

 For the most part they are of a more or less bright brown, when 

 seen by transmitted light ; but sometimes portions are found 

 nearly colourless, even when care is taken to distinguish my- 

 celia of other fungi, which frequently occur amongst the dark 

 threads. There is generally a cellular pellicle spreading over 

 the surface of the leaf, from which the mycelium springs imme- 

 diately, but which sometimes arises from the rooting base of its 

 threads. A similar structure exists in many epiphytous fungi, as 

 in Asterina, and even occasionally in Cladosporium — in such 

 cases the pellicle being often readily separable from the cuticle of 

 the matrix. The mycelium gives off numerous perithecia, whicli 

 are vertical, and frequently more or less branched. They con- 

 sist at first, it is believed, of a simple membrane, though possibly 

 a layer of cells is deposited in the course of their development 

 on the walls. In all cases, however, threads run up from the 

 mycelium, either subsequently or contemporaneously with their 

 first origin, partially covering the inner sac, and more or less 

 closely crowded, their apices frequently extending beyond them, 

 and forming a fringe, the cilia of which are more or less di- 

 vergent, consisting of such loosely-connected joints that the ulti- 

 mate articulations frequently fall oflT, and form doubtless one 

 mode of propagation. These investing threads are precisely ana- 

 logous to the coating in ]Mr. Thwaites's curious genus Cystocoleus, 

 in which also the apices of the threads are free. In Rhizonema, 

 an alga which is also invested with cells, the cellular coat, 

 from the creeping habit of the genus, gives out rootlets, and the 

 threads of which it is composed are sometimes distinctly separate 

 from one another at the apex of the series of endochromes, which 

 they surround. The structure is well illustrated by what takes 

 place constantly in Batrachosperrmim, and some species of Cal- 

 lithamnion., where a descending stratum of cellular threads is 

 given off at the base of the lower articulations of the branchlets, 

 investing the main divisions of the plant, and increasing them in 

 thickness. The peridia, or perithecia, whichever it may be 



