342 The Pyrenomycetes and some Problems they suggest. 



conditions of more or less evanescent hyaline appendages, has 

 led to a woeful multiplication of bad species. The beginner 

 should be very cautious in dealing with it. 



A reference to the case of the Discomycete, Phaeangclla 

 Smithiana Bond, may be excused. First found in Scocland in 

 1908, and later, near Scarborough,* described at first from 

 immature specimens, it was placed in a genus quite different 

 from the one it now occupies. 



Again, in September, 1910, Mr. Gibbs sent me some speci- 

 mens from near Sandsend that looked like the fairly common 

 Bertia moriformis, but though everything else agreed, the 

 spores became as many as 7-septate, whereas Bertia should 

 only have i-septate spores. This may represent a hitherto 

 overlooked character of the species which would necessitate 

 transferring ' moriformis ' to the genus Bertiella. Such few 

 cases are enough to show the danger of the hasty making of 

 species as well as the inconvenience of genera founded on 

 single characters. 



There are many other important morphological characters 

 worthy of consideration. 



A different question that, so far as the writer knows, has 

 not yet been answered, concerns the Valsaceae — are they 

 typically saprophytes or parasites ? The perfect fungus is 

 usually found saprophytic on dead twigs often still attached 

 to the trees. But were the earlier stages — the myceloid and 

 pycnidial — not parasites ? It is a difficult question to solve 

 except by cultural experiment, but one would like an answer. 



Modern research into the sexual and cytological features 

 of the Pyrenomycetes may possibly affect classification. At 

 present though, as far as an outsider can judge, and as was 

 stated in a paper in this year's ' Transactions of the British 

 Mycological Society,' investigators are not at all agreed as to 

 either the correctness of many of the phenomena recorded, 

 or their significances. There is something attractive in Prof. 

 Lotsy's suggestion | that the true Pyrenomycetes may prove 

 to be separated from allied groups by the presence of vestiges 



of original fertilisation by trichogyne and spermatia 



Polystigma rubrum is one of the few Pyrenomycetes that have 

 been thoroughly investigated so far, and on the ground that it 

 contains very evident gametic organs, trichogyne and sper- 

 matia, continuous aseospores and cellular structure little altered 

 from its supposed algal ancestors, it has been made by one 

 writer the type of a new division of Polystigmales. 



But it is probably too early to make any radical alterations 

 in classification on these grounds. However, the ordinary 



* The N iifiirnHsf, July 191 2, pp. 206-7. 

 f Vortrage iiber Botaiiische Stammesgfeschichte, Vol. I., p. 470. 



Naturalist, 



