Royal Microscopical Societij. 219 



yellow bodies on Coleiis leaves go through some of the life pro- 

 cesses belonging to fungi, it may be concluded that they are normal 

 portions of the leaf structure, and not in any way parasitical. 

 This will be the more apparent, as a note in ' Pereira's Materia 

 Medica,' under the head of the Mint Family, speaks of similar 

 bodies being recognized in many plants by German authorities. 



If Coleus leaves are dried under moderate pressm'e, as between 

 the leaves of a book, the yellow bodies shrink considerably in size, 

 and lose some of their fine colour, but remain — at any rate for some 

 weeks, the duration at present tested — sufficiently near their natural 

 state to be distinctly recognized, and for their position outside the 

 leaf to be in no doubt. 



"When Mr. Berkeley saw a shde prepared by Mr. Howse, he 

 thought the bodies in question might be fungoid, and belonging to 

 the genus Synclujtrium. He remarked, however, that he did not 

 know any fungus in which " the endochrome was so neatly divided." 

 No such division could be seen in any of the leaves I examined, and 

 it was probably caused by the potash treatment. In a recent letter 

 to me, Mr. Berkeley expressed a doubt as to the fungoid character 

 of these bodies ; and as Coleus plants are very common, and grow 

 vigorously in summer weather, or greenhouse temperature, FeUows 

 of this Society can easily satisfy themselves on the subject. 



Some Notes on Podisoma. — Having several specimens of the 

 Carpet Juniper (/. squamata) and of the Irish Juniper — one 

 annually infested with P. fuscum and the other with P. juniperi — 

 observations on these peculiar fungi have been facilitated. On 

 former occasions I have not been lucky in seeing the first form of 

 these fungi, or what from this year's experience I take to be such. 

 The stems they infest look gouty, with cracks in the bark, and 

 somewhat suddenly, al)out April, masses of protospores crop out, 

 yello^\i.sh brown in tint, darker in the case of P. fuscum and lighter 

 in P. juniperi communis. P. fuscum forms broader masses, at 

 first separate, but soon coalescing; while P. juniperi forms slender 

 masses that swell but do not coalesce — at least that is their behaviour 

 in the specimens to which these notes refer. 



For a general account of this genus Podisoma, with the biblio- 

 gi-aphy relating thereto, reference may be made to a valuable paper 

 by Mr. Cooke in the ' Journal of the Quekett Club' (Jan., 1872). 

 In this he says : — " If we take a portion of the orange substance 

 which constitutes the fungoid parasite of the common juniper during 

 the spring, and place it in a drop of water under the microscope, 

 we shall observe that it consists of a multitude of brown bilocular 

 spores, or spore-like bodies, with very long, transparent peduncles. 

 These spores, for so they were long regarded, bear a striking resem- 

 blance to those of some species of Puccinia, ^vith this difference, 

 that they are imbedded in gelatine, whereas in Puccinia the clusters 



