46 SURVEY OF THE REPRODUCTIVE PROCESS 



when ripe escape by special apertures, or by the general 

 breaking up of the cyst. The basidia with their quaternate 

 spores have certainly much more the character of a gemmi- 

 parous fructification, such as the stylospores of the lower 

 Fungi or the tetraspores of the Florideae, than of impregnated 

 germs, such as the spores produced in thecse are presumed 

 to be ; so that in these plants though they seem to stand 

 at the head of their own type of vegetation the only 

 obvious reproduction is of a non-sexual kind. It remains for 

 future investigation to decide whether sexual organs exist 

 at all, or what may be their relations ; whether the spores, 

 like those of the ferns, originate androgynous prothallia, or 

 whether the stool of the mushroom, like the capsule of the 

 moss, is itself the result of a process of impregnation, 

 effected by organs standing in some more immediate rela- 

 tion to the mycelium, which have not yet been detected. 

 That an " alternation" of some kind prevails the analogy of 

 other Fungi would lead us to anticipate. 



In the group of Hyphomycetes also, which presents one 

 of the lowest types of fungoid growth, containing the various 

 forms of mould and mildew, spermatia, and spores fecun- 

 dated by them have not yet been generally recognized. But 

 there are grounds for believing that many of these vegeta- 

 tions are not true or autonomous species, but, like the 

 forms of Coniomycetes before noticed, merely states of the 

 mycelium of other species, bearing a secondary kind of 

 fructification. Thus Aspergillus has been observed by Bary to 

 yield a form of Eurotium ; Fusarium is known to develope 

 a species of Peziza ; the genera Tuber cularia and Myrioce- 

 phalum appear to be mere precursors of species of Sphceria ; 

 and Oidium is admitted generally to be only an early con- 

 dition of Erysiphe* Others of these rudimentary forms of 

 organization, it is possible, ought rather to be referred 



* Berkeley Op. Cit., pp. 248, 292, 300, 330. 



