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species of the higher fungi have no claim to rank as true species, and that plants 
like Agaricus procerus, A. rachodes, A. excoriatus, A. gracilentus, with others, are 
mere forms of one and the same plant with every intermediate link. 
Van Tieghem has recently been working on this species, and he has arrived 
at the conclusion that the fungus produces spores of different sexes. But to me 
it is quite unreasonable to imagine seeds or spores to be of different sexes. Known 
facts point quite in the opposite direction, and if sex is once allowed in seeds and 
spores then we must be prepared to allow sex in pollen and spermatozoids. A 
spore or ovule must be considered female, whilst unfecundated or still in the ovary, 
but when once fertilised it combines both sexes and cannot be other than herm- | 
aphrodite. A secondary colour, as orange (which combines the red and yellow 
primaries), can never be red or yellow. In diccious plants the seeds are capable 
of producing either sex, and are not themselves male or female, and even the great 
fleshy rootstock of Bryonia dioica will be male, in one place, and if removed to a 
different position be female. The Rev. M. J. Berkeley, writing of Coprinus 
(Gardeners’ Chronicle, April 17, 1875, p. 503), says —‘‘ Late examinations of the 
spores of some Coprinus under germination seem to show that impregnation takes 
place at a very early period.” 
Now my observations show that this impregnation often actually takes place 
on the hymenium itself, the product being a single cell, which in the species now 
described rapidly developes into a new individual. The spore and spermatozoid 
may be considered as somewhat analogous with an ovule and a pollen grain, or 
with what is seen in Chara; or like the escaped oosphere and spermatozoids in 
Fucus amongst the Algz. 
I cannot attach much importance to Cirsted’s interesting paper on the 
fructification of the Agaricini. His notes are on Agaricus variabilis, a plant he 
gathered from a Mushroom bed. Now, as far asmy experience goes, A. variabilis, 
is peculiar to dead stems, sticks, and leaves, and does not grow upon dung. 
Moreover irsted experimented upon threads of mycelium taken from dung, and 
presumed only to belong to this Agaricus ; but this mycelium was quite as likely, 
in my opinion, to have belonged to fifty other things. De Bary, speaking of 
Cirsted’s observations says—‘“‘ It is impossible not to perceive the similitude be- 
tween-the phenomena seen by M. CHersted and those I have described in Peziza 
confluens.” It is quite doubtful whether or not Cirsted had got the mycelium of 
some dung-borne Peziza for his experiments, as P. vesiculosa, which is always 
present on dung-heaps. 
In the observation of natural phenomena it is never well to follow, without 
thought and original observation, in the footsteps of others. In the case of 
Peronospora infestans, because De Bary said the resting-spores were not likely to 
be found in the Potato plant, it was almost uniyersally accepted as a fact that 
they never could be there found. Because conidia had not been described, it was 
commonly believed that no conidia existed. The mycelium of Peronospora has 
till lately been described as always destitute of suckers, but in some of the 
