ON THE SEXUALITY OF THE FUNGI. 269 



ia great measure artificial, and those proposed by Van 

 Tieghem ^ and by Winter ^ appear to answer their purpose only 

 temporarily, and certainly need not occupy us here. The same 

 is true for other classifications up to 1880. 



It was just prior to this period that the very important, 

 memoir by Brefeld^ was published, in which he detailed the 

 results of his investigations into the nature of the Basidio- 

 mycetes. 



By cultivation in nutritive media, Brefeld succeeded in 

 tracing the whole cycle of Coprinus from the basidio-spore 

 to the formation of a mycelium and fructification. He shows 

 that the latter arises by a purely vegetative process from the 

 dense mass of interwoven hyphse (sclerotium) budded off from 

 the mycelium, and that no trace of a sexual process or of the 

 formation of sexual organs can be detected either previously to 

 the development of the sclerotiura or afterwards. The pileus 

 with its hymenium are produced simply by a budding off of 

 numerous hyphse growing up together, either directly from the 

 mycelium, or with the intervention of the sclerotium. Bre- 

 feld regards it as certain that these Fungi are entirely without 

 sexual organs. 



It is impossible to go into the details of this voluminous 

 memoir ; but it is important to notice the results embodied in 

 a scheme of a proposed classification of the Fungi which 

 Brefeld tabulates at the end of his valuable paper, since we 

 have here a comprehensive view of the direction in which 

 modern speculations in mycology were tending. 



In the accompanying diagram I have slightly condensed 

 Brefeld 's scheme, since the original contains details of little 

 importance for our present purpose. 



' ' Ann. des Sc. Nat.,' ser. 6, t. iv, 1878. 



- ' Hedwigia,' 1879 — see also Rabenhorst's ' Kryptoganien Flora.' 



3 ' Schimmelpilze,' Heft iii, 1877. 



