Knowledge. 



With which is incorporated Hardwicke's Science Gossip, and the Illustrated Scientific News. 



A Monthly Record of Science. 



Conducted bv Wilfred Mark Webb, F.L.S., and E. S. Grew, M.A. 



MAY, 1915. 



SOME NOTES ON THE BIOLOGY OF THE LARGER 



BRITISH FUNGI. 



By SOMERVILLE HASTINGS, M.S., F.R.C.S. 



In the following pages an attempt will be made to 

 describe simply some of the more interesting 

 points regarding the life - history of the larger 

 British Fungi. As is the case with most living 

 things, a large proportion of the energy of nearly 

 all the members of the mushroom tribe is given up 

 to the perpetuation of their kind. Therefore, in 

 the description of the life-history of mushrooms and 

 toadstools, the structure of the organs bearing the 

 spores and the dispersal of the spores themselves 

 take a very large share ; indeed, the only part 

 of the fungus plant known to most people, namely, 

 the mushroom or toadstool, has solely to do with 

 the formation and dispersal of the spores. In a 

 previous article on this subject (see " Knowledge," 

 Volume XXXVII, pages 98, 124, 168) the question 

 of spore-formation and dispersal has already been 

 gone into, and it will not be further mentioned 

 in the present paper. 



In the common mushroom the plant itself is 

 formed of fine threads, called mycelium (see 

 Figures 100 and 102), which live in the soil and 

 obtain their nourishment from the organic 

 matter contained therein. The mushroom plant 

 is entirely free from chlorophyll, and is therefore 

 incapable of obtaining any of its organic 

 constituents from the air. It feeds exclusively 



on formed organic matter. When the mushroom 

 plant has obtained a sufficient store of nourishment 

 spore-production begins, and what we call mush- 

 rooms then appear. These organs are wonderfully 

 adapted for the production of myriads of tiny spores, 

 which are carried broadcast by the wind, and 

 when they fall on suitable material they rapidly 

 germinate and produce fresh mycelium. Fungus 

 plants have again and again been grown on various 

 sterilised materials from their spores, and have 

 been induced to go through their complete life- 

 cycles. Fischer was able to grow the Beechtuft 

 (Annillaria mucida) (see Figures 118 and 122) 

 from its spores on sterilised bread kept moist, and 

 to obtain from it typical toadstools, which ripened 

 a second crop of spores in fifty-eight days from the 

 time the first spores germinated. When the spore 

 germinates it puts out a thread-like process, which 

 gradually elongates, and, later on, begins to branch. 

 The process tends to grow in the direction of any 

 nutritive substance on which the fungus feeds. 

 The attraction is simply chemiotaxis, and does not 

 imply any vital function. The Japanese, Miyoshi, 

 sowed fungus spores on a plate of mica, which was 

 pierced by numerous tiny holes, and rested on a mass 

 of jelly containing sugar and other nutritive sub- 

 stances. He found that the fine threads growing 



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