RESEARCHES ON THE MUCORINI. 57 



produce a different species of Mucor, according to the genera- 

 tion they belong to. lint the spores of these species of 

 Mucor, when sown in their turn, only produced a similar 

 kind of Mucor, and never returned to Pilobolus. 



When these results -were published we Avere naturally 

 anxious to confirm them. But both the' spores of P. cedipus 

 and of P. crystallinus have refused to germinate with us in 

 the juice of cooked plums, or, at any rate, they have only 

 produced very short tubes, and nothing more has come of 

 them. It is quite true that some of our cultures yielded abun- 

 dance of Mucor, and belonging to more than one species, but 

 we were quite prepared for this, for we had previously detected 

 the presence of their spores. In one case amongst seventeen 

 spores of Pilobolus, three spores of Mucor developed a 

 vigorous mycelium and abundantly fructified. Another time, 

 among nine spores of Pilobolus there was a spore of another 

 species of Mucor, and this also fructified. In other cases, 

 extraneous spores produced Botrytis cinerea and Altemaria 

 tetiuis. 



Phycomyces. 



This plant was discovered by C. Agardh on the walls and 

 wood-work of oil mills and storehouses for oil in Finland.^ 

 Being unacquainted with its reproductive apparatus, and being 

 especially struck with its dark green colour and the shining 

 aspect of its large flattened filaments, he supposed it to be 

 an alga, and named it Ulva nitens — a name which he 

 still retained for it in 1823. ^ In this year, however, G. 

 Kunze met with it under the same conditions in Saxony, and 

 especially in the neighbourhood of Leipzig and Dresden ; 

 having detected the columella which terminates the fruc- 

 tiferous hyphse and the elongated spores with which the colu- 

 mella is covered, he assigned it a place amongst Fungi, 

 under the name of Phycomyces nitens.^ But the existence 

 of the sporangium, which envelopes at first the whole of the 

 spores together with the columella, appears to have escaped 

 his notice. It consequently did not occur to him to place his 

 plant near Mucor, and, on the contrary, he thought that it was 

 allied to Aspergillus. More recently Berkeley met with this 

 organism on oil-casks, and observed the structure of the 

 sporangium previous to dehiscence. The analogy which it 

 presents with that of Jiwcor led him to place it in that genus 



' ' Synopsis Algarum Scandinavise,' 1817, p. 46, 



2 Species " Alj?arum," 1823, i, p. 425. 



3 G. KuDze, • Mykologisclie Hefte,' ii, 1823, p. 113. 



