DEVELOPMENT 15 
out by DeBary,* Brefeld,* Zopf,* Woronin,* Harper,* and Nich- 
ols,* there are many features especially connected with uncommon 
forms which have not been touched upon. It has not been the 
object of this investigation to go into many of the details of devel- 
opment, yet some features of it have been studied with sufficient 
result to warrant at least a preliminary report of some features 
of the process at this time. It will be the object, therefore, in 
the following pages to record such observations as are deemed 
not sufficiently emphasized in accessible literature, with simply 
enough of the well-established facts to make a continuity, but no 
attempt will be made to give a detailed account of any of the 
processes. 
The method adopted for the culture of the fungi in the laboratory 
has enabled me to determine within very narrow limits, the period 
of development of many of the species recorded here. By keep- 
ing careful record of the time the cultures were started and again 
that at which mature living perithecia were found, the period of 
development was secured within very narrow limits. It must be 
fully realized however that the results given in the following table 
represent approximate conditions only, and this for very obvious 
reasons. The only precise method of determining the period of 
development would be by means of pure cultures. This has been 
resorted to only in case of S. fimicola. The results in all other 
instances are subject to errors arising from two sources—the diffi- 
culty of ascertaining the precise time of maturity, and the imper- 
fection of the observations. At first thought it may appear per- 
fectly easy to determine the former and one usually does so by 
the color of the spores, but as has been shown on another page 
this is very unreliable because in many of the species the spores 
actually germinate and grow before they have either the color or 
shape of what is ordinarily considered a mature spore. Woronin, 
for instance, found that the young hyaline cylindrical spores of P. 
Jimiseda grow immediately on being released from the ascus. My 
own observations confirm this phenomenon for this species as well 
as for P. coprophila, while in S. fimicola, where the spores are 
ellipsoid from their inception, they have been seen to germinate 
and grow within the ascus while they were yet in the early olive- 
* See Bibliography at close of paper. 
