46 OUTLINES OF BRITISH FUNGOLOGY. 



bear fruit almost exactly in the same way, as may he seen hy 

 comparing the spore-hearing cells of an Agaric (Plate ], 

 fig. 1) with those of Botrytis curta (Plate 1, fig. 7 b). The 

 lower part of the thread of the Mould answers to the sporo- 

 phore (Plate 1, fig. 1 c), the short branchlcts to the spicules, 

 (Fig. 1 b)y and the spores to those organs in the Agaric 

 (Fig. 1 a). 



I have chosen as an object of comparison with the Mould 

 a genus which has reached almost the highest development of 

 which a Fungus is capable ; but the same reasoning applies to 

 every other case amongst the spore-bearing Fungi. 



The justice of the notion that the highest Fungi may be 

 considered as consisting, theoretically, of a mass of closely- 

 compacted Mould, is proved by the great difficulty which there 

 is in distinguishing the highest Hyphomycetes from the lower 

 Clavati. The only difference is, that in the latter the sporophores 

 are more decidedly distinguishable from the tissue that bears 

 them than in the former. In the one case the spores are 

 seated on distinct organs, in the other on the mere tips of the 

 component threads, and even this distinction is not always 

 available. It is, moreover, curious that, under certain circum- 

 stances, the common Penicillmm glaucum, instead of forming, 

 as it usually does, a continuous stratum, breaks up into little 

 tufts, and in some cases the threads composing these tufts are 

 so incorporated as to form a sort of common stem, with a 

 globose head of spores, and the condition which thus results 

 has been formed into the genus Coremium, or where a still 

 greater concentration has taken place, it has been described 

 as a Stilbum, one of the highest forms which Moulds arc ca- 

 pable of assuming. 



The hard, carbonaceous tissue of which the perithecia of most 

 Sphceriacei and of the cognate forms amongst the Coniomycetea, 

 — if indeed there are any of these which are not mere condi- 



