434 The Botanical Gazette. [October, 
the name Saprolegnia stliguaeformis. In the following year 
a criticism of Reinsch’s paper was published by Cornu in 
which he asserts that the Saprolegnia siliquaeformis of 
Reinsch is his own Monoblepharis prolifera. Since this time 
there have been no further contributions to our knowledge of 
the genus with the exception of certain further notes and fig- 
ures by Cornu in Van Tieghem’s Traité de Botanique. In 
1892 A. Fischer* distinguished Monoblepharis prolifera 
Cornu under a new genus Gonapodya, placing the two genera 
by themselves in a family of Monoblepharidacee equal in 
value to the Saprolegniaceze under the order Saprolegniine, 
in which he is followed a year later by Schroeter. * 
Gonapodya being, however, apparently unrelated to Mon- 
oblepharis will be considered in a subsequent note and the 
order may be assumed to include the single genus from which 
it takes its name, of which but two species (/. sphaertca and 
M. polymorpha) have, up to the present time, been observed 
and described by Cornu alone as above stated. 
The family owes its importance chiefly to the fact that 
among the whole group of Phycomycetes it presents the only 
instance in which a female cell or oosphere is fertilized through 
the agency of actively motile antherozoids. The striking re- 
semblances which exist between its reproductive processes 
and those of alge like Vaucheria or C@Edogonium are too self- 
evident to need enumeration. To those who, like the writer, 
are unwilling to believe that the fungi form anything in the 
nature of a series derived like the series of Algz from a com- 
mon origin at its base, it has an especial interest; since it 
affords one of the strongest arguments in support of the the- 
ory which would view the fungi as a heterogeneous group 0 
degenerate forms derived at different points from the differ- 
ent types of the algal series. 
The species which have come under the writer’s notice are 
four in number including M. polymorpha, and a second form 
related both to this species and to M. sphaerica; but like the 
former maturing its oospores outside the oogonium. The two 
remaining species which are considered in the present note, 
though closely allied to one another, are very distinct from 
either of the remaining forms, corresponding in the position 
of their antheridia to M7. polymorpha while they resemble M. 
ee re errata Dee ee, itr dni sel eal en, maton 
*Rabh. Kryptogamenfl. Abth. I. 4: . 1892, 
SEngler and Prantl, Natiirl. Besksatt pl wot 6 1893. 
