516 The Botanical Gazette. [December, 
presence of the yellow oily material in the cell contents so 
often associated with zygosporic reproduction in mucors gen- 
erally. As far as can be judged with a one-twelfth oil im- 
mersion there seems to be eventually a direct connection 
between the contents of the mucor hypha, and the supplying 
gamete. The finger-like outgrowths from this gamete become 
roughened by scattered and not very conspicuous promi- 
nences, and although they suggest the protective branches 
which surround the zygospores of Aédsidia or Phycomyces, do 
not seem to have any very definite function in the present 
instance, since they arise on one side only of the spore which 
they but half enclose. In general appearance they recall to 
dense groups arising from what would at first sight be taken 
for a general distortion of the host, instead of a mass of partly 
absorption of the septa separating adjacent cells, the contents 
of one such cell passing into the other and there forming the 
zygospore. In the present genus, as has been seen, the proc- 
ess is similar in that a parasitic branch divides into two cells 
which conjugate with one another, one being receptive, the 
other supplying; but apart from this circumstance the two 
ypes are not to be compared. 
he close relationship which exists between the present 
genus and Dimargaris is evident from Van Tieghem’s figures; 
in fact Dispira A mericana corresponds far more closely in the 
details of its non-sexual fructification to the type of the first 
i i Mince and the dis- 
ence of habit. Among the Mucorinez they may be provis- 
ionally included in the Cephalidez, although perhaps suffi- 
ciently aberrant in their mode of sexual reproduction to form 
a group by themselves. 
