SPORE-DISCHARGE IN THE TREMELLINEAE 177 



in water and preparing to germinate. The spores of several other 

 Tremellineae behave similarly. 1 



Massee says that the fruit-bodies occur on pine- wood. That 

 is true, but my experience is that they occur on various kinds of 

 wood both hard and soft, but especially on coniferous woods. 

 Massee says that the fruit-bodies are 1-4 lines wide. These 

 measurements seem to me a little too large. As Massee says, 

 the fruit-bodies are yellow. However, I find that the fruit-bodies 

 most exposed to the light are the yellowest, and that those which 

 grow under logs and boards and in other very dark situations are 

 relatively very pale yellow and sometimes almost colourless. 



Massee, 2 in his British Fungus-Flora, describes the red fruit- 

 bodies of Dacryomyces deliquescens as follows. 

 " Dacryomyces stillatus Nees. 



" Gelatinous, rounded, convex, more or less plicate, persis- 

 tently orange ; spores cylindrical, curved, and multiseptate, 18-22 

 X 7-8 p. 



"Dacryomyces stillatus. Nees, Syst., p. 89, f. 90; Cke., Hdbk., 

 p. 352. 



" On pine and other decaying wood. Distinguished from 

 D. deliquescens by its rather small size, firmer substance, 

 deeper orange colour, and larger, multiseptate spores. Usually 

 barren." 



Massee describes these red fruit-bodies as being more or less 

 plicate. My experience is that they are mostly hemispherical and 

 irregularly humped or obtusely tuberculate rather than plicate. 

 He also says : "Spores cylindrical, curved, multiseptate, 18-22 X 

 7-8 p," but he fails to tell his readers that by " spores " he means 

 not basidiospores, but oidia embedded in the gelatinous outer 

 layer of the fruit-body. Each oidium has at least one septum 

 across it, but the oidia hang together in chains and show all 



1 In his illustration of a basidium of Dacryopsis nuda Mass, in his British Fungus- 

 Flora (vol. i, 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 unicellular. 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. 



2 G. Massee, loc. cit., p. 67. 



