166 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [SEPTEMBER 
to one another. At the first 6-8 nodes are laterally produced short 
conical or barrel-shaped branches, generally septate at base and sep- 
tate terminally at junction with sporiferous head. Heads spherical, 
from about 19/ in diameter at first node to about 13 in diameter 
toward the periphery, produced in acropetal succession and bearing 
the spores on slight papillae. Spores spherical, about 5.5# in diame- 
ter, yellowish, thick-walled, very finely echinulate, ripening on the 
different heads in acropetal succession. Ultimate branches curved, 
sterile, often beset with protuberances on their convex sides, becoming 
septate, shriveled, and frequently abstricted before spore maturation. 
Hyphae of rhizoids, stalk, and crown becoming septate about the 
. time of spore maturation. 
Growing in a gross dung culture on fresh sphagnum, Cambridge, 
Mass. 
This fungus appeared in the Harvard laboratory in the fall of 
1902. An undetermined sample of dung had been placed ina crystal- 
lizing dish with fresh unsterilized sphagnum, and yielded in the course 
of time a scanty growth of mucors. Somewhat later the peculiar 
fructifications of this species were found already covering the layer of 
filter paper used in the culture like a grove of microscopic trees, and 
extending into the loosely packed sphagnum below. A large variety 
of substrata was tried in the attempt to obtain a pure culture of the 
fungus; and mass transfers from the original culture, which for sev- 
eral days continued to produce new fructifications, were made to dung 
and to fresh sphagnum, but it seemed impossible to elicit a growth i 
new cultures. 
A few spore germinations were obtained in Van Tieghem cells 
horse dung agar. The spores that germinated did so in two days, 
swelling to about 8u in diameter before emitting slender germ pies 
simple or slightly branched. The longest germ tube observed 
reached but 170m and no further growth could be obtained. The 
action of the fungus in the cultures attempted suggested that aie 
species might have been parasitic upon the scanty growth of ne 
Which had developed in the original culture, and though it did not 
seem possible to stimulate growth by an admixture of this 
mucor, the frequent irregular behavior of Syncephalis under similar 
circumstances does not render such a condition entirely improbable. 
