A TROPICAL PYRENOMYCETOUS FUNGUS. 353 



bodies — eight in all — become the future ascospores. During 

 the later stages most of the finer filaments disappear, appa- 

 rently by absorption, and by this time no trace of the 

 external tufts of fine hypha; is left. In a vertical section of 

 the nearly ripe fruit-body, the asci are seen to spring from 

 an interwoven mass forming the floor of the domed chamber 

 (figs. 18 and 22), and by the absorption of water and increase 

 of pressure, the roof becomes split into radial, irregular seg- 

 ments at a later date (fig. 3), the structure giving way at 

 the weakest parts — ^. e. where th-e walls are merely 

 coalescent side by side — hence the stellate character of the 

 rupture as the asci burst irregularly and emit their ripe, 

 brown spores. 



We have thus far left undetermined the origin of the 

 ascogenous curved hyphae found in the mass of finer fila- 

 ments forming the inner mass of the fruit body. In a 

 vertical section of a boss, at a stage somewhat anterior to 

 fig. 16, I have obtained a structure figured in fig. 17, and 

 if we may accept the analogy with what occurs in Ei^ysiphe, 

 &c.,it appears probable that this is the ascogonium or sexual 

 organs of the fungus. 



Within the mass of felted filaments derived from the inner 

 walls of the domed disc, has arisen a subglobular mass of 

 extremely thin-walled cells, which appear to be united into 

 a solid ball of cells. The resemblance of this body to the 

 young perithecium of certain pyrenomycetes is too evident 

 to be ignored. Nevertheless, I have not succeeded in tracing 

 the details of its formation. That this body consists of the 

 ascogenous hyphae figured at figs. 19 and 2\ there can be 

 no reasonable doubt, but whether it arises after the action 

 of spermatia on an ascogonium, or by the copulation of an 

 antheridial branch with an ascogonium, must remain for the 

 present undecided. 



All things considered, it appears most probable that this 

 coil of ascogenous hyphse arises quite internally, and we 

 have already seen that no evidence exists for believing the 

 outer tissue of the fruit-body — the domed disc — to have 

 arisen by a sexual process. If this be so, it would appear 

 that the disc or dome of carbonised cells is not the true 

 perithecium, but a sort of covering body, within which the 

 true fruit-body arises. We have seen that the tufts of 

 sporidia, or sperma^ia-bearing filaments, arise from and near 

 this outer covering of cells, and analogy might suggest that, 

 just as in many other Ascomycetes the homologous hyphae 

 spring from the stroma, so here we have a stroma fore- 

 shadowed in the protective disc formed before the true sexual 



