530 MINNESOTA BOTANICAL STUDIES. 



The gleba is thin, slightly shorter than the pileus, very dark 

 olive green and much firmer in texture and more persistent than 

 is common with the other members of the genus ; deliquescing 

 slowly in dry weather and without so much of the foetid odor 

 common to the plants of this class. 



The description of the development of sporophore must be- 

 gin with the youngest stage found, although manifestly a com- 

 plete description should start rather with the activity, nuclear or 

 cytologic, that takes place before the spore-bearing branch is 

 formed. 



In the youngest stage found (Fig. i), the sporophore was 

 about .4 mm. in diameter and borne upon a branch about .1 

 mm. in diameter. The young sporophore consisted of but two 

 distinguishable areas ; the central (Fig. i, r] and the peripheral 

 (Fig. i, V), the chief difference being that the hyphae of the 

 central area were somewhat larger and took a much deeper 

 stain than those of the other. The two areas of the strand 

 seemed to be continued into the sporophore with a slight in- 

 crease in the proportional space occupied by the outer one. The 

 line between them is not as clearly marked as in the strand, the 

 hyphag being closely anastomosed. A detail of the structure 

 of this stage is shown in Fig. 12. Much time and ingenuity 

 was spent in attempting to determine the condition in the strand 

 just previous to the formation of the sporophore. It seems 

 evident that one must look for the starting point in the main 

 strand or at least in the very young branch. 



There seems to be good reason for believing that some cell 

 fusion may take place in the strand previous to the giving off 

 of the sporophore branch. In Fig. 8 is shown a small mycelial 

 strand with a branch "a" leading to a very small sporophore. 

 Near the middle of this strand is shown one hypha much more 

 prominent than the rest, so much so that it may readily be seen 

 through the surrounding tissue, and by careful focusing its 

 course may be traced for some distance either side of the place 

 of branching. It is difficult to see through the tissue, and still 

 more difficult to get sections to show whether or not an actual 

 fusion has taken place, which has given rise to a new body. 

 Evidently a fusion of some kind may have occurred, and, in 

 the reaction following, one of the hyphas may have come to be 

 of a slightly different nature, for the single hypha is not par- 

 ticularly prominent except near the branching point. The uni- 



