DISCOID FUNGI— DISCOMYCETES 177 



of the mycelium l)y the base of the scolecite, wliich remains 

 naked.^ 



The same investigator claims to have been more successful 

 in his search after some act of copulation in his experiments 

 with Pyronema confluens. As early as 1860 he recognised the 

 large, globose, sessile, and grouped vesicles which originate the 

 fertile tissue, but did not comprehend the part which they 

 were to perform. Each of these emits from its summit a 

 cylindrical tube, generally flexuous, but always more or less 

 bent in a crozier shape, sometimes attenuated at the extremity. 

 Thus provided, these utricles resemble so many tun-shaped, 

 narrow-necked retorts, filled with a granular, thick, roseate 

 protoplasm. In the middle of these, and from the same fila- 

 ments, are generated elongated clavate cells, with paler contents, 

 and more vacuoles, termed by him paracysts. These, though 

 produced after the other bodies, or macrocysts, finally exceed 

 them in height, and seem to carry their summit so as to meet 

 the crozier-like prolongations. It would be difficult to deter- 

 mine to which of these two orders of cells belongs the initiative 

 of conjugation. Sometimes the advance seems to be on one 

 side and sometimes on the other. However this may be, the 

 meeting of the extremity of the connecting tube with the 

 summit of the neighbouring paracyst is a constant fact, 

 observed over and over again a hundred times. There is no 

 real junction between the dissimilar cells, except at the very 

 limited point where they meet, and there a circular perforation 

 may be discerned at the end, defined by a round swelling, 

 which is either barely visible or sometimes very decided.' 

 Everywhere else the two organs may be contiguous, or more or 

 less near together, but they are free from any adherence what- 

 ever. If the plastic matters contained in the conjugated cells 

 influence one another reciprocally, no notable modification in 

 their appearance results at first. The large appendiculate cell 

 seems, however, to yield to its consort a portion of the plasma 

 it contains. One thing only can be affirmed from these 

 phenomena — that the conjugated cells, especially the larger, 

 wither and empty themselves, while the upright compressed 



^ Cooke, Fungi, their Nature, Uses, etc., p. 174. 

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