74 VAN TIEGHEM AND LE MONNIER. 



The Ch(stocladium grows in the air amongst the tall, rigid 

 hyphee of Mucor like parasitic lianes among trees. But the 

 plant is not, strictly speaking, parasitic, though it can live 

 parasitically and becomes more vigorous when it does so. 



It is necessary in growing the two plants together to avoid 

 sowing too large a number of spores of Mucor. These ger- 

 minate sooner than the others and if present in any quantity 

 completely suppress their growth leading to the belief held at 

 first by ourselves, as well as by De Bary and Woronin of an 

 imaginary transformation of the Chatocladium into the 

 Mucor. 



Chcetocladium Brefeldii. — We have given this name to a 

 species very similar to the preceding, but more slender in all 

 its parts, and which differs from it by its bluish sporangia, 

 which are much smaller, being only from '003 to '005 mm. 

 AVe believe it to be identical with that studied by Brefeld, 

 and of which he obtained zygospores. 



Brefeld believes that the reproductive bodies of this species 

 are simple naked conidia, and that it is parasitic on Mucor 

 Mucedo and Rhizopus nigricans. He deduces this parasitism 

 from two supposed facts — (1) that it fails to develop, either 

 alone or associated with any other of the Mucorini ; (2) if, on 

 the contrary, it is associated with these species, it attaches 

 itself to them and develops and fruits abundantly. 



To test Brefeld's observation, we traced the result of the 

 cell-culture in a drop of orange juice of a single reproductive 

 body. It measured 'OOSS mm. ; six to eight hours after it 

 was sown a large crack formed in its external membrane, 

 and a bluish spherical spore escaped. The empty membrane 

 is often hyaline, slightly greyish, and sometimes finely 

 granular*; it is thinner than in Ch. Jonesii, and soon under- 

 goes solution in the liquid. The existence of this membrane 

 from which the spore escapes in germination proves that the 

 reproductive body must be regarded as a monosporic sporan- 

 gium, and not, as Brefeld thought, as a spore. 



The spore now swells to many times its original size, while 

 still remaining spherical, and puts out one or two hyphae, 

 which elongate, ramifying in a fan-like manner. The 

 branches are at first destitute of lateral ramifications, but 

 later they develop as they lengthen lateral protuberances 

 and, subsequently, short and hooked branches, which are 

 simple or again ramified. These lateral processes are quite 

 different from the radicular filaments of the mycelial filaments 

 of Mucor; they are never, like those, separated from the prin- 

 cipal hypha by a basal partition (fig. 29). This production 

 in germination of one or two elongated hyphse, the branches 



