276 PROGKESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



dators, are capable of independent germination. " These organs," 

 be says, " are therefore not male fecundating corpuscles (spermatia 

 or pollinides), but a particular kind of spore, usually alterable and 

 ejibemeral." He also states that he has seen the fruits of C. plicatilis, 

 radiatus, and filiformis develop and ripen in a cell, or a mycelium, 

 under conditions in which no rods were produced or introduced. 

 The incapacity to germinate, alleged on the part of the rods, was, 

 M. van Tieghem says, only a negative argument, which falls before 

 the fact of their germination, which has been ascertained. If some 

 of the rods are placed in a drop of maniire water they are seen in a 

 few hours to become oval, and even spherical, after which they push 

 forth vigorous mycelium tubes, which branch and anastomose. Two 

 days later, the mycelium produces more groups of hagtiettes, which 

 disjoint themselves into the rods. This is their normal generation. 

 If, however, they are sown in great numbers, so that they are close 

 together in the nutritive fluid, the conidia do not enlarge sensibly, 

 but emit very narrow tubes perpendicular to their axes, which ana- 

 stomose like the letter H. If the rods are transferred to a drop of 

 fluid, in which a mycelium of the same species is already developed, 

 they behave in an analogous manner, and anastomose with the myce- 

 lium. If at the point of union the mycelium branch is somewhat 

 exhausted, they pour their protoplasm into it, and renew its activity. 

 After supplying further details, M. van Tieghem says : " The various 

 copulations of the rods we now know are vegetative phenomena, begin- 

 nings of germinations under conditions in which normal germination 

 cannot be accomplished, and with manifestations of the general pro- 

 perty of anastomosing and grafting, which all the cells of these plants 

 possess in a high degree, . . . The theory of the sexuality of the 

 basidiomycetes, apparently based upon the most demonstrative of pro- 

 cesses, cannot resist a more profound study. Will it be so with the 

 basiomycetes ? This will be treated in another paper." 



Emigration of Blood-corpuscles. — Herr J. Arnold has been investi- 

 gating this subject, especially with regard to the conditions of the 

 walls of the blood-vessels during the passage of the corpuscles. He 

 states* that he injected a weak solution of silver into the blood-vessels 

 of frogs, in which single parts of the body had been inflamed twenty- 

 four hours previously. The appearances of the so-called endothelial 

 figures varied considerably from the normal. The " cement lines " ap- 

 peared as broad, strong, zigzag lines, or were only indicated by rows of 

 granules. There are large dark points in them, the stigmata ; and in 

 the cement substance as well as in the stigmata are to be found white 

 corpuscles in the act of passing out of the vessels, and this in various 

 stages of their passage. Not unfrequently several colourless corpuscles 

 are to be seen attached to one part of the cement substance, or to one of 

 the stigmata ; thus, two corpuscles may be lying within the vessel, and 

 fixed by short processes in a stigma, whilst a third one for the most 

 part has penetrated and only remains in connection with the vessel 

 by means of a short process. Sometimes the accumulation of the 

 white corpuscles on the outer side of the vessel, in the neighbourhood 



* Virchow's ' Archiv,* Bd. Ixii., p. 47 ; and ' Med. Record,' Feb. 15. 



