420 ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY. [CHAP. 



out from one of the hyphae, and becomes spirally coiled, 

 like a cork-screw. This branch is called the ascogonium. A 

 second branch (sometimes termed the pollinodiuni) is formed 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of the first. This applies 

 itself closely to the ascogonium, and it is alleged that fusion 

 takes place at the point of contact. Subsequently the as- 

 cogonium increases greatly in size, and produces a number 

 of clavate branches called asci, in the interior of each of 

 which eight spores are formed. In the meantime closely 

 interwoven hyphae, arising from below the ascogonium, form 

 the dense envelope of the fruit. The production of spores 

 in asci is characteristic of a very large group of Fungi, but 

 it is only in exceptional cases that the asci owe their origin 

 to an act of fertilization and the occurrence of such an act 

 is open to question even in Eurotium. The spores formed 

 in the asci are termed ascospores, and reproduce the ordinary 

 form of the Fungus. 



If some bread be placed in a jar and kept very wet and 

 moderately warm, its surface will, in two or three days, be 

 covered with white cottony filaments, many of which rise 

 vertically into the air, and end in rounded heads, so that 

 they somewhat resemble long pins. The organism thus 

 produced is another of the Fungi the mould termed Mucor 

 stolonifer. 



Each rounded head is a sporangium ; the stalk on which 

 it is supported rises from one of the filaments which ramify 

 in the substance of the bread, and are the hyphcz. In this 

 species the hyphae send out branches (the so-called "sto- 

 lons") which grow out from the bread, and on reaching 

 any substratum, such as the plate on which the bread rests, 

 may produce a new crop of sporangia. Each hypha is, 

 as in Penicillium, a tube provided with a tough thickish 

 structureless wall, which is composed of a form of cellulose, 



