PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 97 



occurrence was during the following year, in the month of April, in 

 connection with a specimen of mycetoma preserved in spirits, and 

 again, also about the same date, the mould was seen on some rice 

 paste in which some fresh black fungus particles had been placed in 

 order to ascertain if they could be made to grow artificially.' 



" It will be observed that the mould referred to as having developed 

 under these varying conditions was identified as one and the same 

 kind of fungus — a fact which per se contains a sufficient refutation of 

 the whole theory ; for it is a physical impossibility that spores of 

 fungi which had been preserved in spirits should retain their vitality, 

 consequently the mould which grew on the spirit-jDreserved specimen 

 must have been of extraneous origin ; not only having germinated after 

 the evaporation of the alcohol, but which must have originated from 

 some source other than the interstices of the macerated tissue. We 

 are therefore compelled to infer that the red mould, of various shades, 

 described as having spread over portions of these three and other 

 Madura-foot specimens, was but some developmental form of our 

 ordinary pink-tinted moulds, bearing no relation whatever to the 

 black, yellow, or orange-coloured particles frequently found in diseased 

 tissues of this nature — no closer relationship, in fact, than a crojj of 

 various tinted mould on the surface of rice j^aste does to any coloured 

 l^articles which may chance to be in its substance. 



" No mould with which we are acquainted, however, presents the 

 slightest resemblance to the pink-coloured objects figured in the plate, 

 purjDorting to represent ' the structure of the red mould found in con- 

 nection with mycetoma (Cldonyphe Carteri) ' — figures, by the way, 

 differing materially from those appended to the original text in the 

 ' Bombay Transactions,' or any others which we have seen elsewhere, 

 and which, we presume, must be considered as representing the 

 Chionyphe Carteri more accurately than the early figures. So long as 

 the forms here delineated are associated in the mind with the idea of 

 moulds, one is certainly puzzled to account for their presence ; fortu- 

 nately, however, a sentence in the descriptive text, attached to the plate, 

 supplies us with a key : the objects depicted are referred to as repre- 

 senting 'a fragment of the new growth as this apj^eared upon a 

 specimen of the foot-disease placed in water to macerate,' and a very 

 good representation it is of ' fragments ' which may very frequently be 

 obtained in some specimens of tank water in which, however, no 

 diseased foot need necessarily have been macerated. 



" Looking at tlie drawing, without reference to the text, we should 

 describe the objects as being, probably, some confervoid growths, and 

 the ' spore capsule,' filled with pink-coloured globules, as the encysted 

 gonidium of some Alga, not very unlike the gonidia of Pandorina, 

 as figured in late editions of the ' Micrographic Dictionary,' or 

 Pritchard's ' Infusoria.' To the Alga articles and plates of either of 

 these volumes, or, better still, to some neighbouring tank at certain 

 seasons of the year, we refer our readers for further explanation con- 

 cerning the objects figured in this plate. 



" It is with much regret that we write in this manner concerning 

 any of the labours of so industrious and accomplished an observer as 



