SILURIC FUNGI FROM WESTERN NEW YORK 223 



SILURIC FUNGI FEOM WESTERN NEW YORK 



BY FREDERIC B. LOOMis (Amherst Mass.) 



Plate 16 



At about the middle of the Clinton group as it is developed 

 at Rochester N. Y., occurs a band of hemate containing numer- 

 ous fossils, which give evidence of having been depoisited in a 

 moderate depth of water. In thin sections many of these fossils 

 are found to be more or less perforated by fine tubules entering 

 from their surfaces. The borings are of interest as additional 

 testimony of the presence of plants during Clinton time, a period 

 when plants were very sparsely represented.^ The borings, as 

 will be seen from the figures, enter from the surface and are 

 believed to represent plants which grew on the shells and sent 

 only a part of their filaments into the shell. The tubules pene- 

 trate a little way into or occasionally riddle the whole shell. 

 The borings are uniform in size, there being no tendency to irreg- 

 ular swellings in places where the host material was softer. 

 At the ends of certain tubules are spherical swellings, in most 

 cases of uniform shape and size. These swellings may represent 

 sporangia, though I have no conclusive evidence to that effect. 

 The borings doubtless represent the work of the mycelium of a 

 fungus, probably some member of the Phycomycetes. I 

 regard them as due to fungi rather than to algae for the following 

 reasons: the tubules are quite uniform in size and shape; while 

 those of algae, under the same conditions, are more or less irreg- 

 ular; there is also in these fossils no evidence of septa, in which, 

 respect they are more like fungi than algae. The tubules 

 are very small, ^io to -g-^ mm in diameter, which is smaller than 

 is usual for algae, but quite normal for the mycelia of fungi. 

 The spherical inflations at the ends of some filaments are very 

 like sporangia, or other fungous swellings; but not at all like 



^Bythotrephis, which is common in the rocks of this age and has 

 usually been looked on as algous, is regarded by Rothpletz and others as 

 a sponge. i ) 



