Royal Microscopical Society. 99 



On removing some of these small concretions, which proved to be 

 too intractable for further microscopical examination, I placed 

 them in a test-tube, covered them with liquor potassas, and subjected 

 them for a few minutes to a boiling heat. A small amount only of 

 the colouring matter was dissolved out, but soon fragments were 

 found to be soft enough to break up on a glass slide. A drop of 

 glycerine solution was then added, and a thin glass cover placed 

 over all. With a power of 350 diameters, I first observed numerous 

 detached fragments of an orange-coloured resinous substance, a 

 number of fat-globules and discoid bodies, with granular matter. 

 On carefully focussing and illuminating the specimen by direct 

 light, articulated filaments were seen imbedded, and shghtly pro- 

 jecting beyond the edge of the coloured mass; represented at 

 Fig. 3, c. When more magnified these were converted into free 

 loops, not unlike papillaj. The fungus threads were for the most 

 part exceedingly minute; there was a compressed, or fossilized 

 appearance about them, if I may so express it. 



On increasing the magnifying power to 650 diameters, these 

 threads were resolved into long, jointed, dissepimented cells ; some 

 branching out (represented in Fig. 4) and attaining to a consider- 

 able length, while others terminate in an enlarged ovoid head, 

 probably a spore receptacle, containing one or more spores. In 

 others, again, a minute oil-globule apparently occupied the centre ; 

 but it is not easy to determine this point, from the large quantity 

 of colouring matter present. A peculiar budding out was noticed 

 in some of the globose cells (represented in Fig. 3, e), and a few 

 bodies separated away from the coloured mass, were of a paler 

 colour, and partaking of an amoeboid form (Fig. 3, d)* These 

 later somewhat reminded me of Haeckel's Leptocytode ; from the 

 cytode of which this histologist says : a homogeneous membrane 

 is differentiated from the granular contents ; prolongations thrust 

 out, and ultimately becoming a free-moving body, a Protamoeba 

 primat/va. The walls of the threads appear in some instances thick, 

 while those which were separated from the homogeneous matter 

 were exceedingly thin and transparent. Notwithstanding the boiling 

 in liquor potassse, large quantities of fat-granules continued to float 

 about, and the carbonaceous colouring matter was not nearly 

 removed. The growth in some particulars, save that of colour, 

 appears to partake more of the nature of a confervoid plant in its 

 simple articulated threads and cell multiplication, than of a " truffle- 

 like fungus." But as " one swallow does not make a summer," 

 neither does one examination enable me to write or speak with 

 much authority on fungi. I should prefer, in all examinations of 



* Dr. Carter has I believe described, althougli I have not been able to refer 

 to his paper, " Amoeboid bodies," in connection with an advance stage of the 

 funsrus-foot disease. 



