149 
REPRODUCTION IN THE MUSHROOM TRIBE, 
(CoPRINUS RADIATUS, FR.) 
BY MR. WORTHINGTON G. SMITH, F.L.58., &e. 
For the purposes of minute reasearch into the vital phenomena of the 
Mushroom tribe, Coprinus radiatus, Fr., possesses many advantages over the 
other species of the large order to which it belongs. The first great advantage 
peculiar to C. radiatus is that it grows readily and abundantly on dungheaps 
from April to December, and it comes up equally well in town and country. 
The second point in its favour is that it is so small and transparent that every 
part can be quickly examined, and an entire plant kept under the covering 
glass of the microscope. The third advantage found in C. radiatus rests in the 
fact of its whole life being so exceedingly short, that its entire vital functions 
are performed in a few days. Having these points in view I have, during the 
whole of the present summer and autumn, kept up a large bed of fresh horse- 
dung in my garden, and from this bed I have narrowly watched the growth of 
many generations of the plant I am about to describe. 
A complaint is often made by persons unused to the microscope, and to 
the appearances of objects as seen by its aid, that it is impossible to see the 
real objects as they are represented in drawings. To a certain extent this is 
borne out by facts, for a drawing is never meant to represent what may be 
accidentally seen at one sitting, but is designed as a summing-up of all that 
has been seen during many hundreds of sittings. Anyone looking for the first 
time through a good telescope at Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s ring, or the planet 
Mars, might be a little disappointed in the apparent smallness and lack of 
strongly marked outlines in the objects seen; but this does not detract from 
the correctness of astronomical diagrams, which are only matured after many 
patient observations. No one expects to see the solar system as shown in a 
model, or the country as seen on a map. 
It may reasonably be premised that the facts observed in connection 
with the life history of Coprinus radiatus will more or less apply to all the 
other species belonging to the Mushroom tribe; but it would be impossible to 
make the observations here recorded on the more fleshy species, because, instead 
of days, these latter plants take months to mature. In C. radiatus generation 
after generation keeps springing up in almost daily succession, but in the more 
fleshy species, exclusive of Coprinus and Bolbitius, I am convinced there is, as a 
rule, but one generation in the year. The common Agarics of the autumn spring 
up from the mycelium formed during the fall of the previous year, and this 
mycelium has rested in the ground for twelve months. In digging up old 
pasture ground, or the dead leaves of an autumn which has passed, mycelium in a 
resting state is invariably found. There is no such long rest with the mycelium 
of Coprinus radiatus, for so long as the weather is not too dry, too wet, or too 
