58 



INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FUNGI 



vital energy, which is immediately applied to the production 

 of the filanieutous tissue on which the disc is later to be 

 borne. 



Tulasne found the scolecite readily in Ascobolus furftiraccus, 

 but failed in tracing fertilisation ; but he was rather more 

 successful with Pyronema melaloma, in which he found that the 



scolecite is certainly a 

 lateral branch of the 

 mycelium (Fig. 35). 

 This branch is simple, 

 or forked at a short 

 distance from the base, 

 and its diameter gen- 

 erally exceeds that of 

 the filament which bears 

 it. It is soon bent and 

 often elongated in de- 

 scribing a spiral, the 

 irregular turns of which 

 are lax or compressed. 

 At the same time its 

 cavity is divided into 

 eight or ten cavities. 

 Sometimes he had seen this special branch terminated by a 

 crosier, and interlocked with the bent part of an analogous 

 crosier terminating a neighbouring filament. In other cases 

 the growing branch was connected by its extremity with that 

 of a hooked branch. These contacts, therefore, seemed rather 

 accidental than constant. There was, however, no room to 

 doubt that the scolecite was the habitual rudiment of the 

 fertile cup. 



The most complete observations were those on Pyronema 

 omphalodes. The globose vesicles, or macrocysts, which are 

 the beginning of the fertile tissues — each of them emits 

 from its apex a cylindrical tube, always more or less bent 

 in a crosier shape, so that the vesicles resemble so many 

 tun-bellied, narrow-necked retorts filled with a roseate plasma. 

 Out of the same filaments are produced elongated clavate cells, 

 named imracysts, which soon exceed the macrocysts in height, 



Fig. 35.— Scolecite. After De Bary. 



