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II. — Beprodndion in the Mushroom Tribe. 



By WoRTHiNGTON G. Smith, F.L.S. 



{Coprinus radiatus, Fr.) 



For the purposes of minute research into the vital phenomena 

 of the Mushroom tribe, Coprinus radiatus, Fr., possesses many 

 advantages over the other species of the large order to which it 

 belongs. The first great advantage peculiar to C. radiatus js that 

 it grows readily and abundantly on dungheaps from April to 

 December, and it comes up equally well in town and country. The 

 second point in its favour is that it is so small and transparent that 

 every part can be quickly examined, and an entire plant kept under 

 the covering glass of the microscope. The third advantage found 

 in C. radiatus rests in the fact of its whole life being so exceed- 

 ingly short, that its entire vital functions are jierformed in a few 

 days. Having these points in view, I have, during the whole of the 

 present summer and autumn, kejjt up a large bed of fresh horse- 

 dung in my garden, and from this bed I have narrowly watched 

 the growth of many generations of the plant I am about to 

 describe. 



A complaint is often made by persons unused to the micro- 

 scope, and to the appearances of objects as seen by its aid, that it 

 is impossible to see the real objects as they are represented in draw- 

 ings. To a certain extent this is borne out by facts, for a drawing 

 is never meant to represent what may be accidentally seen at one 

 sitting, but is designed as a summing-up of all that has been seen 

 during many hundreds of sittings. Anyone looking for the first 

 time through a good telescope at Jupiter's moons, Saturn's ring, or 

 the planet Mars, might be a little disappointed in the apparent 

 smallness and lack of strongly marked outlmes in the objects seen ; 

 but this does not detract from the correctness of astronomical 

 diagrams, which are only matured after mauy patient observations. 

 No one expects to see the solar system as shown in a model, or the 

 country as seen on a map. 



It may reasonably be premised that the facts observed in con- 

 nection with the life history of Coprinus radiatus will more or less 

 apply to all the other species belonging to the Mushroom tribe ; 

 but it would be impossible to make the observations here recorded 

 on the more fleshy species, because, instead of days, these latter 

 })lants take months to mature. In C. radiatus generation after 

 generation keeps springing up in almost daily succession, but in the 

 more fleshy species, exclusive of Coprinus and Bolbitius, I am con- 

 vinced there is, as a rule, but one generation in the year. The 

 common Agarics of the autumn spring up from the mycelium 

 formed during ihe fall of the previous year, and this mycelium has 



