L-ANATOMY, BIOLOGY, ETC. 



INTRODUCTION 



THE study of Fungi from other than a systematic or 

 morphological standpoint may perhaps, without prejudice 

 to earlier botanists, be said to have been initiated by De 

 Bary, whose brilliant researches, continued by his disciples 

 and others more or less directly under their influence, have 

 gradually raised our knowledge respecting these plants to 

 a level with that relating to most other divisions of the 

 Vegetable Kingdom. 



Cytology has been prosecuted with marked success ; 

 such terms as karyokinesis, implying the presence of 

 nuclear spindle, equatorial plate, chromatin grains, etc. ; 

 centrosomes, centrospheres, reduction of chromophores, 

 etc., occur now in every cytological treatise dealing with 

 fungi, whereas a very few years ago, it was only from 

 analogy that such structures could possibly be conceived 

 to exist. 



The investigations made in this branch of study are as 

 yet too limited to admit of broad generalisations ; never- 

 theless, what has already been done is not without 

 phylogenetic significance. Its influence on our knowledge 

 respecting the sexuality of fungi is most marked, and 



