SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE HYMENOMYCETES. 175 
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE 
HYMENOMYCETES. 
By Rev. Davin Pav, LL.D. 
(Read to Scottish Natwral History Society, 2nd November 1899.) 
Funer belong to a division of plants which has recently 
received the name of Thallophyta, and which embraces also 
the Alge, Bacteriaand Diatoms. It practically includes all 
plants which in complexity of organisation fall beneath the 
Mosses and Liverworts. The characteristic of the Division 
Thallophyta is, that they show no distinction between 
the axis and appendages, ze, between the stem and 
leaves. The groups of which the division is composed 
are very divergent from one another, and it has been found 
very hard to predicate any positive characteristics which 
will apply to them all. They may be taken generally as 
including all plants which stand below a certain line in 
the scale of organisation. 
Fungi, then, belong to one of the groups of this great but 
low division of vegetable nature. They are characterised as 
parasitic or saprophytic plants, destitute of chlorophyll, 
and for the most part, possessing a mycelium. In one 
class of them sexual reproduction is recognised and admitted. 
In all the others reproduction is asexual, and is effected by 
spores and conidia. 
It is not my purpose to differentiate fungi into their 
various classes or sub-classes. This evening we have to do 
with the family of the Hymenomycetes alone, embracing the 
greater part of the larger fungi with which we are familiar 
on our meadows or in our woods. These plants are all 
furnished with a hymenium or fertile surface, consisting of 
basidia, elongated bodies, from the extremities of which arise 
four little processes called sterigmata, bearing on each one 
spore—four spores therefore on each basidium. The 
basidia and spores can be seen with great ease under the ~ 
