DopGE: RELATIONSHIPS OF FLORIDEAE AND ASCOMYCETES 189 
a well-developed layer of pseudoparenchymatous cells. The 
growth of the asci and the pushing out of the paraphyses break 
this layer above the hymenium irregularly and this sterile portion 
is forced back and becomes the excipulum of the apothecium 
(Fic. 9, B). 
Lachnea cretea (Fraser, 44) and Lachnea abundans, which I 
have had the opportunity to study in artificial cultures for some 
time, are entirely enclosed or cleistocarpous in their younger stages 
and are only opened by the thrust of the paraphyses upward as in 
the case of Ascobolus furfuraceus. My sections of the young 
apothecium of Ascobolus Winteri (Fic. 9, A) and of A. Leveillei 
show that the hymenium is well covered by a solid wall of hyphae. 
Even in stages when the spores of some asci are nearly mature 
this wall is still unbroken and it appears that the asci themselves 
in their elongation may be the chief agency in bursting open the 
ascocarp, especially in A. Winteri. In this species the ascogonium 
lies well down at the bottom of the apothecium (Fic. 9, A). The 
ascogenous hyphae grow out from only one cell of the ascogonium 
as rather thick short hyphae. 
W. H. Brown’s figures of young fruit bodies of Lachnea scutel- 
lata certainly indicate that in this species the hymenium is slightly 
exposed from the first. His diagram shows that the inner branches 
of certain hyphae produce the paraphyses, while the outer branches 
of these same sterile hyphae are prolonged into the hairs which 
fold in over the hymenium in younger stages. Bucholtz describes 
what I take to be very much the same condition for L. leucotricha, 
although he claims the young fruit is angiocarpous on account of 
the extremely delicate weft of hyphae that surrounds the whole 
fruit in its earlier stages. Lachnea stercorea (FIG. 10) as described 
by Miss Fraser is gymnocarpous from the first. Miss Fraser 
States that the ascogonium is enclosed by enveloping hyphae 
although the young hymenium is not. Her figures show only the 
Stalk of the ascogonium surrounded by sterile hyphae. Sphaero- 
soma may prove to be gymnocarpous at first, although there seems 
to be a lack of complete agreement in the descriptions of this form 
by Rouppert (74), Setchell (84), and Seaver (83). 
In Ascobolus Winteri it is only rarely that any enveloping 
hyphae arise from the mycelial hyphae giving rise to the asco- 
