74 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [ AUGUST 
The straightening out of the folds in the chamber-walls of 
Phallus caninus and of Phallus impudicus was stated by De Bary 
~ to be due, in his opinion, to the inflation of the chambers by the 
formation of a gas within them.t This idea found its way into 
the text-books.’ 
Such an explanation of the phenomenon has been objected 
to by Ed. Fischer. He points out that the chambers of the 
receptaculum are not surrounded by air-tight walls; that all the 
chambers are open on one side in some species which he has 
studied; and that there is no visible indication of inflation 
of the chambers during elongation in other cases. On these 
grounds he concludes that the walls are not passive in their 
straightening out, as De Bary’s explanation necessitated. That 
they are the active agents he deduces from the forms of the 
cells of pseudoparenchyma at the ends of the folds, and from 
their changes in form as the folds straighten. He gives figures 
showing that at the inner angle of the fold the cells are wedge- 
shaped as if by compression, while on the periphery of the fold 
they are elongated and thin as though stretched there. In his 
experiments of placing such folds in certain aqueous solutions 
of slight density, the turgescence of the cells increased by 
absorption of the liquid, they became more nearly spherical, 
and the effect of such change of form both at the inner angle 
of the fold and at its periphery must have been to straighten 
the fold. 
Two years before the publication of Fischer’s paper, Errera 
came to the conclusion incidentally in his work Sur le Glycogeneé 
chez les Basidiomycetes+ that elongation of the receptaculum in 
Phallus impudicus results from a true process of growth and not 
from mere turgescence by the simple absorption of water. A 
*Zur Morphologie der Phalloideen. Beitrage z. Morph. u. Physiol. der Pilze, 
Abhandl. d. Senkenb. Naturf.-Ges. 5: 202, 207. 1864 
?(a) De Bary, Comp. Morph. of the dae ete., Pa trans. 323. 
(4) Sachs, Text-book of Botany, Eng. trans. 341 
3Bemerk. iiber d. Streckungsvorgang d. aie gis roe Naas Mittheil. 4 
pein Ges. ip Bern, 142. 
em. de l’Acad. roy. de Beluigne 37 (p. §2 of reprint). 1885. 
