PSS a 
1897] ZYGOMYCETES, SYNCEPHALASTRUM AND SYNCEPHALIS s 
this ‘‘sporangial” theory in all respects in so far as concerns the 
genera Syncephalis and Piptocephalis. The cylindrical sporan- 
gia in these cases are said by him to be filled with protoplasm 
containing many nuclei which becomes simultaneously divided 
into as many portions as there are spores in each spore row; 
these masses being separated by an intersporal zone of hyaline 
protoplasm, as in the sporangia of typical mucors. 
Other authors, again, are not inclined to accept this homol- 
ogy, and A. Fischer, for example, in his well-known revision of 
the Phycomycetes in Rabenhorst’s Kvryptogamenflora, inclines 
to the opinion that, in the absence of any connecting form 
between these two supposed types of sporangia, it is as reason- 
able as well as more simple to assume that these so-called coni- 
dia have had an exogenous origin independent of that which 
has given rise to sporangia of the normal type, and are there- 
fore not homologous. Having been personally inclined to 
agree with the views expressed by Professor Fischer in this 
connection, the writer was somewhat surprised to find, in exam- 
ining the spore rows of a species of Syncephalastrum that has 
been kept in cultivation for several years in the laboratory, a 
condition of things which, in so far as this genus is concerned, 
not only confirms the theories of Van Tieghem just mentioned, 
but affords at least an approach to the very connecting link 
between the spherical and the cylindrical form, the absence of 
which was pointed out by Fischer. 
The species of Syncephalastrum, three of which have been 
described, appear to be in general of tropical origin, since in all 
cases in which they have been observed, with perhaps one 
exception, the material on which they have been cultivated has 
been brought from the warmer regions of the earth. In the 
writer’s laboratory substances from Africa, China, Ceylon, and 
Java have repeatedly yielded the same species, which, although 
very variable in cultivation in regard to its branching and to the 
number of spores in each spore-row, cannot be separated from 
S. racemosum Cohn. It grows and fruits luxuriantly on agar, 
and is sharply distinguished from other members of the Cephal- 
