228 Transactions British Mycological Soctety. 
hymenium. Each basidium has a body which is slender and 
cylindrical and which develops at its apex two stout divergent 
arms or sterigmata, the tips of which come to penetrate through 
the surface of the gelatinous matrix. Each sterigma produces 
at its free tip a single, elongated, curved spore which is provided 
with a well-marked hilum. The time taken for a spore to develop 
from a just recognisable rudiment to full size is only about 
23 minutes. After a further 27 minutes the spore is discharged. 
Thus about 50 minutes only are taken up in the development, 
ripening, and discharge of each spore. There can be little doubt 
that this rapid rate of coming to maturity for each individual 
spore is a factor in assisting a revived fruit-body in rapidly 
resuming its spore-discharging function after rain. The drop 
excreted at the hilum begins to appear about 16 seconds before 
the spore is discharged, grows until it attains the diameter of 
the spore, and is then carried away by the spore when this is 
shot from its sterigma. A spore can be shot out from its sterigma 
0-5—0°65 mm., so that although the hymenium often looks up- 
wards, the wind has an opportunity of carrying away the spores 
before they can fall back on the hymenium. 
Massee*, in his “‘ British Fungus-Flora,’’ describes the yellow 
fruit-bodies of Dacryomyces deliquescens as follows: 
“Dacryomyces deliquescens Duby. 
Gelatinous, rounded or irregular, convex, gyrose, yellow, 
hyaline, basal portion root-like and entering the matrix, spores 
cylindrical, obtuse, curved, 3-septate, 15-17 x 6-7. 
Dacryomyces deliquescens. Duby, Bot. Gall., p. 729; Cke., 
Hdbk., p. 351. 
On pine-wood. In perfection during the winter months. 
Forming yellow subcircular convex masses I-4 lines broad, 
often growing in long lines out of cracks in the wood.”’ 
Massee’s statement that the spores are 3-septate is misleading. 
The fact is that the spores, when on their sterigmata and 
immediately after discharge, are unicellular just like those of 
other Tremellineae, and only become 3-septate and 4-celled 
when lying in water and preparing to germinate. The spores 
of several other Tremellineae behave similarly}. 
Massee says that the fruit-bodies occur on pine-wood. That 
is true, but my experience is that they occur on various kinds 
* G. Massee, British Fungus-Flora, London, 1892, vol. 1, p. 67. 
7 In his illustration of a basidium of Dacryopsis nuda Mass. in his British 
Fungus-Flora (vol. 1, p. 56), Massee represents the spores on the sterigmata 
as 3-septate and 4-celled. It is not unlikely that this is an error and that the 
spores on the sterigmata should have been represented as unicellulat. Massee 
may have found isolated spores lying on the hymenium which had become 
3-septate after discharge and have then supposed that they were 3-septate 
before discharge. 
