1906] OVERTON—THECOTHEUS PELLETIERI 475 
mentary tract or to be naturally or artificially partly digested before 
germination will occur, or perhaps the spores tested may not have 
been mature. 
I have shown that ascogonia are present from which the asci 
arise, although I have been unable to find the earliest stages of these 
organs in Thecotheus. Since in the forms in which sexual organs do 
exist, as described by several investigators, an ascogonium arises as 
the result of nuclear and cell divisions from a fertilized oogonium, I 
think it practically certain that such oogonia exist in Thecotheus. 
Since the ascogonia are in groups, several being present in each young 
ascocarp, it is also safe to conclude that the fruit bodies arise as the 
product of multiple sex organs, just as in Pyronema and Boudiera. 
Thecotheus, therefore, is another example of a form among the -Asco- 
bolaceae with a compound apothecium. 
In Thecotheus the asci are developed from the penultimate 
cells of the recurved tips of the ascogenous hyphae, and they are 
at first binucleate, later becoming uninucleate in the usual manner. 
There is apparently no tendency here toward the condition described 
by Marre and GurILireRMOND, wherein a system of binucleate cells 
are formed, as in Galactinia, corresponding to the synkaryophyte 
in which a long series of binucleate cells occur, the nuclei finally 
fusing in the basidium, as in the Basidiomycetes and rusts. MAIRE 
claims to have found that these binucleate cells of the ascogenous 
hyphae originate from hyphae of the subhymenium, whose cells are 
multinucleate. The first cell arising from these subhymenial hyphae 
- contains two nuclei, which divide by a conjugate division, giving rise 
to a series of branching synkaryophytic hyphae, which eventually 
form the asci. This branched, ascogenous hyphal system MAIRE 
compares to the hyphal system which gives rise to the basidia in the 
Basidiomycetes. Although Matre and GUILLIERMOND have found 
this system of ascogenous hyphae in certain forms, it still remains 
and is of the highest importance to determine how the ascocarps 
originate in these forms. If, as HARPER (:05) suggests, the condition 
found in Pyronema, and still more advanced in Galactinia and Pustu- 
laria vesiculosa, could work back until the egg cell was reached, an 
apogamous condition might result, such as is now found in the Hymen- 
omycetes (Miss NicHots :04), and the nuclear fusion in the ascus 
