CURREY, ON FUNGI. 117 



diameters. Corda mentions the decaying stems of Um- 

 bellifers as the habitat of the plant_, but adds that it some- 

 times grows on patches of Torida punctata and Torula 

 herbarum. It is hardly distinguishable from Torula her- 

 barum by the naked eye^ but the latter has a greenish tinge 

 under a lens which can hardly be mistaken. There were a 

 very few spores of the latter Torula in company with my 

 specimens of the Helminthosporium. 



Botryosporiumjndchrum. (Corda, 1. c, pi. xix.) — This mould 

 forms large white mealy patches upon dead or living plants, 

 upon annuals by preference, according to Corda. I found it 

 upon a fragment of some herbaceous plant in a rubbish 

 heap at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, in the month of October, 

 1854. The flocci are very delicate, forming a woolly-looking 

 mass, and the spores are arranged in four or five compact 

 globular masses at the extremities of short ramuli, which are 

 alternate iipon the main threads. Corda's figure is very 

 good, but I have not seen the tubercles upon the main flocci, 

 to which, according to his statement, the lateral branches 

 are articidated. 



Pliragmidiwn. — Notwithstanding the number of observations 

 upon the Phragmidia which have been made and published 

 from time to time, there are points connected with their ana- 

 tomy and physiology upon which differences of opinion exist, 

 and which render the genus one of especial interest to the 

 microscopical observer. In the first place, the question of 

 the relationship between the Phragmidia and the Uredo, 

 with which they are almost invariably associated, can hardly 

 be considered to be finally decided. AH mycologists, I should 

 suppose, would admit that both kinds of fruit belong to the 

 same plant, i. e., are the produce of the same Mycelium, but 

 it seems to me to be still an open question, whether the 

 Phragmidia represent a highly developed state of the grains 

 of the Uredo, or whether the tAvo productions are essentially 

 distinct forms of fruit. M. Tulasne, in his memoir in the 

 ' Annales des Sciences' for 1854, merely states his accordance 

 with Unger's opinion that the transformation of the Uredo- 

 grains into Phragmidia is inadmissible -, but it cannot be de- 

 nied that when a number of these fruits are mixed together 

 it is sometimes hardly possible to say to Avhich sort one par- 

 ticular specimen belongs, so delicate are the gradations by 

 which the one kind passes into the other.'^ 



Another question which would admit of discussion is that 



* In the 'Botanische Zeitung,' 1853, p. 787, Itzigsohn suggests that 

 the Uredo-grains are produced from the interior of the Phragmidia, an 

 opinion which I cannot reconcile with my own observations. 



