KOLLIKER, ON VEGETABLE PARASITES. 175 



to open on the surface of the horny fibre. At any rate, 

 there may often be perceived on the fibres, when viewed on 

 the surface, and in side-views, pretty distinct openings ; and 

 moreover, especially on the addition of acid, the air always 

 escapes from the fungus filaments at certain determinate 

 spots. 



My justification, in regarding all the above-described 

 filaments as belonging to a fungus, lies in the circumstance 

 that I have succeeded in demonstrating, together with them, 

 the existence of numerous sporangia. (Figs. 2, 3.) The fertile 

 filaments are, as it seems to me, all, or the majority of them, 

 short ramuscules of the superficial network, passing inwards, 

 and supporting at the extremity rounded sporangia, from 

 - 91'" to 0-015'" in size, and when viewed on the side, of a 

 hemispherical form. The minute structure of these bodies 

 could not be ascertained, owing to the appearances being 

 obscured by the air among the spores. Even when the air 

 was expelled by means of balsam, little was gained, inasmuch 

 as the transparency of the whole was then too great to allow 

 anything to be seen beyond an indistinctly areolar substance. 

 In a good many sporaugia the spores were in a germinating 

 condition, and not unfrequently presented delicate branch- 

 ing figures. 



A second sponge also given to me by Dr. Bowerbank, and 

 described by him as "a true sponge with tubuli in the 

 fibres/' has a horny skeleton without spicules, and numerous 

 anastomosing fibres pretty nearly all of the same diameter. 

 The fungus-filaments in this sponge are found by no means 

 in all the fibres of the skeleton, entire portions occurring 

 wholly free from them ; an important fact, inasmuch as in 

 this case the adventitious nature of the enclosed tubuli is 

 not shown by the same decided proof as in the former instance, 

 viz., by the presence of sporangia, none of which were met 

 with. The coustitution, however, of the tubuli was in this 

 case such, that even had they existed in all the horny fibres, 

 I should not have hesitated in referring them to fungus- 

 filaments. They present the appearance of rather wide canals, 

 usually in the number of 1, 2, 3, rarely more, penetrating 

 into the interior of the horny fibres, and giving off in their 

 course, at an acute angle, rather numerous branches, which 

 also continue to run in a longitudinal direction. It is peculiar 

 that all these principal trunks give off, at right angles, a 

 greater or less, and sometimes a very considerable number of 

 ramuscules, which run straight to the surface of the fibre, 

 where most of them open externally, as may be plainly seen 

 by the escape, in dried specimens, of the air contained in the 

 filaments. I could perceive no trace of sporangia within the 



