178 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [August, 



distal end of which the contents of the cell finally collect. After several 

 characteristic nutations the protoplasmic portion of the body becomes 

 from two to four septate. From each of these cell divisions short ste- 

 rigmata arise (fig. i), into which the contents of the cells are emptied, 

 and from each of which is abscised one or more sporidia, which are 

 prepared to produce a germ-tube immediately after abstriction from the 

 promycelium (fig. 4). 



Reproduction. — Present knowledge does not allow of a definite asser- 

 tion reo-arding the presence or absence of a sexual process. Certainly 

 no one has made a satisfactory demonstration of sexual organs in any 

 of the UredineiE. Of the various spore forms the uredospores are of 

 such an obvious conidial nature that none will account that stage as 

 other than asexual. The formation of the teleutospores seems not to 

 be difterent. although the fruit as a whole presents many points mor- 

 phologically analogous to that of other Ascomycetes. so that a sexual 

 process has been advocated for this point in the development ;* yet the 

 whole unfolding, from the beginning of the young spore-bed to the per- 

 fection of the fruit, shows nothing characteristic of a sexual process. 



Morphological appearance, development, connection with the sper- 

 mogonia, and various other points have combined to place the sexual 

 process, if any such exists, with the ascidium fruit, but fact is wanting. 

 Mr. Geo. ]Massee, of England, has indeed figured the development of 

 an oogonium and antheridium. which he affirms he witnessed in .'Eci- 

 dium ranunculacearum, but the indefiniteness of his paper and the 

 diagrammatic nature of his principal drawings make the value of the 

 whole somewhat doubtful. His figure 4,! at least, does not represent 

 the manner in which the basidia first appear in most species. A longi- 

 tudinal vertical median section of the body, which he represents in fig. 

 4, would show the young basidia to arise from an arched base corres- 

 ponding to the contour of the oogonium, so that the medially-situated 

 basidia must arise from a higher point on the young spore-bed than the 

 more externally situated ones. In other words, he shows that the young 

 spore-bed is convex instead of concave, and that the basidia which are 

 to abstrict the Eecidiospores first arise, not from the individual hyphas of 

 the bed. but from a globular body, a condition which I have been unable 

 to verify. 



In those cases in which I have sectioned the young ^-Ecidium fruit at 

 a stage of development just previous to the appearance of the basidia, 

 the stroma was found to consist not of a stalked body, as represented in 

 his figure, but of a mass of interlaced hyphae consisting of branches and 

 extensions of the ordinary hyphte (fig. 7). 



In both ^'Ecidium berberidis and^^cidium hepaticarum, which I have 

 studied carefuUv, the sphere of interwoven hyphte attain to nearly the 

 normal proportions of the ^cidium before the basidia make their ap- 

 pearance. Vertical longitudinal median sections of the young fruit at 

 this time showed that each basidium arises as a bud-like branch from 

 individual hyphae, which lie nearly on a horizontal line with the 

 base of other basidia of the same fruit or cup (fig. 7' '^)- I'^ regard 

 to the order of development, the basidia do not difler from that displayed 

 in the formation of the young teleutospores, the older growths being 



*Bessey, Text-book of Botany, pp. 314-317. 

 t L. c, plate iv. 



