4G0 Meyen's Keport for 1839 on Physiological Botany. 



its much longer leaves and larger cones, the apex of whose 

 scales are broader, and marked with numerous radiating fis- 

 sures. The leaves are double the length of those of the mari- 

 tinia of Lambert, and the cones are larger and more oblong. 



XLVII. — Report of the Results of Researches in Physiological 

 Botany made in the year 1839. By F. J. Me yen, M.D., 

 Professor of Botany in the University of Berlin. 

 [Continued from p. 407.] 



In the large and splendid works on Fungi which have been 

 published by M. Corda in the past year, we find some obser- 

 vations which are of interest as regards the jjhysiology of 

 these productions. In describing a mould* called Gonatobo- 

 trys simplex, he says, that in the lower vegetable orders we 

 often see forms represent a lower form of a more higlily 

 developed species ; and that in the meeting at Prague (1837) 

 he had directed attention to a considerable number of such 

 types which frequently form parallel series, and endeavoured 

 to show that in the inferior Fungi especially mathematical 

 combinations can be formed if symbols are substituted for 

 the separate organs of the mould or fungus ; and that each 

 of the members of the series of combinations produced by the 

 combination of these symbols represents one of those groups 

 of forms which we have hitherto been accustomed to regard 

 as types of genera. M. Corda promises to explain these se- 

 ries, both historically and theoretically as well as practically, 

 in a separate w^ork, and hopes that the moulds of the tro- 

 pical regions may afford several new groups which will fill 

 up the place of the now missing types. In this work M. 

 Corda has also given a plate with figures of Syzygit.es mega- 

 locarpus, and a full description of the formation of the fruit, 

 which, as is well known, is here accompanied by the phaeno- 

 menon of copulation ; he observed that the two pyriform 

 warts from w^hich the fruit is produced not only touch each 

 other, but completely coalesce, so that the contents of both 

 can mix as soon as the partitions between them are absorbed. 

 After the junction of these two branches follows the forma- 

 tion of the fruit ; in the middle of these connate branches are 

 formed one or two cells, which represent the sporangiolum, 

 which in a ripe state is covered with large angular warts. 

 This sporangiolum contains a thick fluid consisting of oil-glo- 

 bules, molecules, and from two to five spores. Frequently 

 the two branches do not join, and then a spherical sporangi- 

 olum is formed at the apex of one or even of both of them. 



* Praclitflora der europaischen Schimmelbildungen mit 25 Tafeln, 1839. 

 A notice of this has been given by us in vol. iv. at p. 200. 



