358 Prof. H. Karsten on the Peculiarities 



produced into a very short neck. These orifices are situated iu. 

 the nearly unaltered epidermic layer, and resemble large stomata 

 with white margins. In this way the Sphcerice lie in rows in the 

 parenchyma between the ribs of the above-mentioned organs, 

 without raising the epidermis. The cellular tissue of the grass 

 in the region occupied by the Sphcsrice is more or less completely 

 displaced by mycelium, which forms a dense mass between the 

 vascular bundles, and usually also immediately surrounds the 

 Spharice, The dark-grey Sphcerice consist of a thin cortical 

 tissue drawn out a little in the form of a mouth at the vertex; 

 the outer cells of this, as is shown in fig. 5, are larger, darker- 

 coloured, and rather thicker in the walls than the smaller, inner, 

 very delicate, and pale coloured cells. The very large cavity of 

 the fungus is filled with a white substance, which consists of 

 delicate cylindrical spores, truncated and beset with a circlet of 

 hairs at each end (fig. 6). Apparently these spores are pro- 

 duced singly upon very delicate footstalks, which spring from 

 the inner wall of the perithecium; at least, in very fine sections, 

 spores are seen standing all round the wall, as if they were sup- 

 ported upon the delicate filiform processes of the latter ; but I 

 was unable to detect this with perfect certainty. 



From the uninjured Sphceria, when placed in water, these 

 spores issue for a long time in a continuous stream, separating 

 readily from each other at any movement of the water. The 

 five or six very delicate hairs attached in a circle to each end of 

 the spores are not simple, but usually forked once at about half 

 their length ; they are about half as long as the entire spore, 

 and stand stiffly off all round, like a funnel- or wheel-shaped 

 pappus. 



The spindle-shaped body of the spore is partly opaque and 

 apparently albuminous; but it also allows from two to four 

 corpuscles of gelatinous appearance to be detected in it ; in place 

 of these, when the spore has lain for some time in water, small 

 thin-walled vesicles occur, which, no doubt, were there before, 

 but enveloped in the albuminous matter, which also fills their 

 cavity. In many spores, two of these vesicles (those which are 

 situated near the two ends of the spore) become enlarged in the 

 direction of the middle of the spore, until finally they entirely 

 fill it, and form a delicate transverse wall in the middle by their 

 approximation. In the neighbourhood of this septum they 

 swell more and more, so that each of them becomes pyriform, 

 and the cylindrical spore more or less biscuit-shaped (Hg. 7). 



The tension exerted upon the mother cell (which probably no 

 longer grows), in consequence of the continued centripetal growth 

 of the two daughter cells, is no doubt the reason that the spore 

 subsequently breaks across at the p6int where these two in- 



