196 DopcGE: RELATIONSHIPS OF FLORIDEAE AND ASCOMYCETES 
cases has gone on so far that the second sexual process has also 
disappeared so that the auxiliary cell, ascogenous cell itself, 
whether it can be distinguished from ordinary hyphae by its 
special form or not, may give rise directly to the spore fruit (Thele- 
bolus, Teichospora). ‘These speculations of Schmitz regarding the 
sexuality of the Ascomycetes do not apply to the facts as since 
worked out and are treated much as Heydrich’s theory (54) of 
the origin of the tetraspore mother-cell is today. Not knowing 
of the nuclear fusion in the ascus it did not occur to Schmitz that 
the ascogenous hyphae of Ascobolus were to be compared to the 
odblastema filaments. He considered them merely as equivalent 
to the gonimoblasts growing out of the fertilized auxiliary cells 
to produce carpospores. To him each cystocarp of Dudresnaya 
would be represented by an apothecium, the one or two rows of 
carpospores in Cruoriopsis would be much reduced cystocarps. 
The apothecium should, however, correspond to a whole nema- 
thecium of Dudresnaya cystocarps packed together in one com- 
pound fruit. The fruit of Cruoriopsis would in reality be a very 
good counterpart of the apothecium of Ascobolus magnificus, 
Pyronema, or Collema. One sexual process, or several independent 
and equal in Pyronema, followed by a large number of secondary 
fusions (auxiliary cells with odblastema, nuclear or cell fusions at 
the end of the ascogenous hyphae) gives rise to what we know as 
the spore fruits of the Ascomycetes. 
The attempt to connect the Ascomycetes with the red algae 
on the basis of superficial resemblances between the ascocarp and 
cystocarp is entirely misleading. Schmitz pointed out that this 
system as proposed by Agardh (1), in which the characters of the 
thallus and cystocarp were made the basis of classification, was 
entirely inadequate for the purpose of showing phylogenetic rela- 
tionships. The system proposed by Schmitz, slightly modified by 
Oltmanns and recently analyzed by Daines, makes no use whatevet 
of the characters of the mature cystocarp in circumscribing the 
five large groups into which the Florideae are subdivided. This 
new system is based almost entirely on the morphology of the 
outgrowths of the fertilized egg together with the origin and 
disposition of the auxiliary cells and the development of the fusion 
and central cells. A practical example of the application of these 
