530 MINNESOTA BOTANICAL STUDIES. 
The gleba is thin, slightly shorter than the pileus, very dark 
olive green and much firmer in texture and more persistent than 
is common with the other members of the genus; deliquescing 
slowly in dry weather and without so much of the feetid odor 
common to the plants of this class. 
The description of the development of sporophore must be- 
gin with the youngest stage found, although manifestly a com- 
plete description should start rather with the activity, nuclear or 
cytologic, that takes place before the spore-bearing branch is 
formed. 
In the youngest stage found (Fig. 1), the sporophore was 
about .¢ mm. in diameter and borne upon a branch about .1 
mm. in diameter. The young sporophore consisted of but two 
distinguishable areas; the central (Fig. 1, 7) and the peripheral 
(Fig. 1, v), the chief difference being that the hyphz of the 
central area were somewhat larger and took a much deeper 
stain than those of the other. The two areas of the strand 
seemed to be continued into the sporophore with a slight in- 
crease in the proportional space occupied by the outer one. The 
line between them is not as clearly marked as in the strand, the 
hyphe being closely anastomosed. A detail of the structure 
of this stage is shown in Fig. 12. Much time and ingenuity 
was spent in attempting to determine the condition in the strand 
just previous to the formation of tbe sporophore. It seems 
evident that one must look for the starting point in the main 
strand or at least in the very young branch. 
There seems to be good reason for believing that some cell 
fusion may take place in the strand previous to the giving off 
of the sporophore branch. In Fig. 8 is shown a small mycelial 
strand with a branch ‘‘@” leading to a very small sporophore. 
Near the middle of this strand is shown one hypha much more 
prominent than the rest, so much so that it may readily be seen 
through the surrounding tissue, and by careful focusing its 
course may be traced for some distance either side of the place 
of branching. It is difficult to see through the tissue, and still 
more difficult to get sections to show whether or not an actual 
fusion has taken place, which has given rise to a new body. 
Evidently a fusion of some kind may have occurred, and, in 
the reaction following, one of the hyphze may have come to be 
of a slightly different nature, for the single hypha is not par- 
ticularly prominent except near the branching point. The uni- 
