1895.] Aquatic Fungi. 483 
gium then empties itself, carrying up the second mass, and, 
just as this occurs, the rotating bodies above the latter slowly 
Separate from it and from one another, and almost imme- 
diately swim off as zoospores. The successive formation of 
sporangia and the discharge of new masses then continues, the 
Series of sporangia remaining constantly surmounted by two 
rotating protoplasmic masses, the upper of which breaks up 
into free swimming zoospores just at the period when a third 
massis being discharged. In this way more than adozen empty 
sporangia are often superposed as in fig. 2, the series being 
traversed by the filament which bears them, from the tip of 
which new sporangia are successively produced. In rarer in- 
stances the filament may grow through the sporangium last 
emptied, and, after having attained a variable length, pro- 
duces terminally a new series of sporangia as already de- 
scribed. Occasionally, when the successive formation of 
sporangia has been more than usually rapid, two successively 
discharged masses may unite with one another, as is shown in 
fig. 4, where the contents of the sporangium represented in 
fig. 3 has been discharged and united with the previously dis- 
charged mass above it, the two becoming quite indistinguish- 
able from one another. 
The successively discharged masses appear to be held in 
place by, and to go through their peculiar movements within, 
a perfectly hyaline gelatinous envelope in which each is dis- 
charged. The envelope of the first mass does not appear to 
given in the present connection do not show this envelope, be- 
ing drawn from living material in which its character was not 
determined. Stained preparations show it very clearly, how- 
€ver, and serve to explain the otherwise inexplicable fixity in 
Position of the three successively discharged masses. 
t the time when the zoospores are ready to separate and 
make their escape, which usually is not less than half an hour 
