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time with the complete developement of the parent fungus. Where the fungi are 
tough and enduring the spores and cystidia are as a rule small, and fecundation 
and germination proceeds slowly. Seynes in his notes on the structure of the gill 
plates in Agarics refers to the Cystidia of Coprinus, and says he believes these 
large projecting organs so common in this genus merely serve the purpose of 
holding the gills together in infancy, in the same way as the infant pileus is held 
down to the stem by the annulus. But this view is expressed on insufficient 
grounds for the cystidia manifestly keep the gills apart rather than hold them 
together. In infancy the cystidia of this genus undoubtedly act as pegs to keep 
the hymenial surfaces from touching, but they are so loosely attached amongst the 
cells that they have no power whatever of holding surfaces together. In fact all 
the cystidia I have ever seen are at length pushed bodily out of the hymenium 
and so set free. This phenomenon is very easily observed in Agaricus Mucidus. 
The few botanists who combat the idea of cystidia being male in their nature 
appear to overlook the fact of the open summit of these organs, as figured and 
described by Corda. Not only has the cystidium an orifice through which its 
contents are ejected, but I have convinced myself of the presence of a minute 
operculum in many species. The cystidia in Lactarius pallidus are very curious : 
at first the summit is round and smooth, and the contents are liquid and colorless. 
Soon however the apex becomes lengthened into a long beak and the contents 
before liquid are now granular and yellow and move restlessly about within the 
Cystidium. On reaching perfect maturity, the elongated summit turns aside or 
gets pushed quite off and the revolving granules rush out. 
I have departed a little from the strict consideration of Boletus subtomen- 
tosus alone, because I believe that what is true of one species of hymenomycetous 
fungi is sure to be more or less true of another species, especially when that 
other species is closely allied to the first, and possibly furnished with organs many 
times the bulk of the one first under study. 
Although Boletus is generally described as being without a trama, yet there is 
a series of intermediate cells between each tube, and these cells have the long form 
of ordinary trama cells just as we see similar cells in Paxillus a genus which is 
commonly charactered as being without a trama. A liquid is exuded from 
between the cells into the tubes of Boletus which rapidly crystallizes in the form 
of long straight hair like crystals. The crystals in B. edulis are of a somewhat 
different form. The basidia are studded over the interior surface of each pore and 
each basidium bears the normal four spores supported on spicules. 
Scattered amongst the basidia are a number of cystidia with mouths at first 
closed, and at length open, these mouths discharge a fluid containing fine moving 
granules which I refer without doubt to spermatozoids, these granules attach 
themselves to the spores and as I believe fecundate them, and after a period of rest 
the nuclei of the spores become greatly enlarged aud burst the outer coat of 
the spore. When they emerge they are the first cells of a new plant. 
Ina typical specimen of Boletus subtomentosus five inches in diameter 
there were 17,100 pores. When highly magnified each single pore (taken to the 
IG 
