Reproduction in the Mushroom Tribe. By W. G. Smith. 25 



of the threads (or fluid) from the cystidia with the threads from the 

 unpierced spores may be sufficient for the production of a new 

 plant. But De Bary, in criticising Klotzsch, says an opinion of 

 this nature is entirely gratuitous, and the contact and its result, if 

 real, would represent nutrition rather than fecundation, and, as far 

 as he knows, there exists, he says, no other observation on any 

 female organ susceptible of fecundation by the cystidia. I cannot 

 fall in with De Bary's views at all, especially after the analogy 

 found in Fucus and in the confervoid pollen (which has no outer 

 coat), and which exhibits rotation in the flowering plants found 

 under Zostera, Phucagrostes, &c,, and which are fecundated when 

 in a state of immersion in water. 



As regards the spores of woody species of fungi, they are pro- 

 bably fertilized on the parent plant, and are blown away by the 

 wind in a condition suitable to at once form the first cells of a new 

 plant on any proper habitat. If Agarics were perennial and per- 

 sistent, instead of being annual and fugitive, we might expect to see 

 a new hymenium produced each year upon the lower surface of the 

 old one, and this state of things really does exist in many species 

 belonging to the perennial and persistent woody fungi of trees, 

 where a new stratum of tubes is every year produced underneath 

 the old one, so that the age of the fungus in years may be correctly 

 ascertained by merely counting the sti'ata. As to the mycelium 

 itself, and the possibility of its producing sexual organs in Agaricus, 

 I have had the subject before me for many years, and have seen 

 many germinating spores, but no trace of any sexual organ other 

 than the spermatozoids as produced from the cystidia themselves, 

 or from the protoplasmic filaments which they throw out. I am 

 therefore disposed to believe that the absence of sexual organs 

 on the mycelium is owing to the threads being the produce of 

 fertilization. 



As for the expressed juice of horse-dung, it abounds with nema- 

 toid worms, spores and infusoria of many kinds— no drop can be 

 examined from a dungheap after a shower of rain without seeing 

 large quantities of these organisms. Therefore, any uncertain 

 thread taken for examination from dung is sure to lead to error. 

 All my experiments were carried out in duplicate, one with ex- 

 pressed juice, and the other with distilled water, with very little 

 difi'erence in result, as the new plant seemed to live principally on 

 the remains of the old parent. 



As a proof of how much there is still to be learnt respecting 

 the life history of Agarics, I may say that in Sach's recently pub- 

 lished ' Text Book of Botany,' one of the very best and most 

 complete books of its class ever published, there is no mention 

 whatever made of cystidia in the description of Agaricus, and in La 

 Maout and Decaisne's ' Descriptive and Analytical Botany,' under 



