58 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
the walls of the “‘spore mother-cells’” become disorganized, thus 
setting free the spores within the perithecial wall. IkENo concludes 
with the assertion that WENT’s classification of Monascus among 
the Hemiasci is strictly correct, and that BARKER’s fungus is not a 
member of the genus Monascus, but that it is a typical Ascomycete. 
Several important differences will be at once noted in these two 
accounts, the crucial difference being the one which concerns the 
origin of certain structures in the swollen ascogonial cell, or “‘central 
cell,” as BARKER terms it. IKENO conceives of these structures, 
e ‘“Cytoplasmaballen,” as arising by free cell formation, simply 
by an aggregation of cytoplasm around certain nuclei; other nuclei 
in the ascogonium taking no part whatever in the process. BARKER, 
on the other hand, thinks that these deeply staining bodies are seg- 
ments of one or more hyphae which have grown in from the outside 
of the central cell, and that the ultimate origin of these ascogenous 
hyphae is as outgrowths of the central cell itself, which finally turn 
and grow again into the cell from which they have sprung. Both 
assert that these bodies bear within them later the spores, and in 
other respects the two accounts in the main agree. 
DANGEARD proposes now to assist us out of our difficulties by 
making BARKER’s Monascus a new species. KuyPER,? the latest 
writer on the subject, accepts this suggestion, and in a study of both 
M. purpureus Went and M. Barkeri Dang., finds confirmation in 
the main of IKENO’s conclusions, although he calls IkKENo’s ‘‘spore 
mother-cells” true asci. He adds, however, the additional observa- 
tion that a nuclear fusion precedes the development of the young asci. 
Monascus Barkeri differs, according to his views, from M. pur pureus 
in an important respect. In M. Barkeri he has the nuclei fusing ‘in 
pairs before the formation of the asci, and in M. purpureus, after the 
asci are formed. In M. Barkeri, his observation agrees, therefore, _| 
with BARKER’s assumption that nuclear fusion in pairs occurs in the 
enlarging ascogonium. Kuvyper regards this fusion as analogous 
to the fusion in the young ascus of M. purpureus, but such a fusion 
as he describes in the latter should be referred rather to the later — 
3 Kuyper, H. P., De peritheciumontwikkeling van Monascus purpureus Went en 
Monascus Barkeri Dang. Kon. Akad. van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 13:46-294- 
T pl. 1904. 
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