224 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



swellings of algae, which are usually quite irregular in size and 

 shape. Such spherical swellings as I have figured on the ends of 

 various hyphae have been frequently described^ on hyphae which 

 had penetrated into the wood or leaves of fossil plants. Indeed, 

 the appearance of the large number of filaments, entering from 

 the surface and penetrating a short distance into the calcareous 

 shells, is very like that produced by the mycelium of a lichen in 

 penetrating a limestone or other rock on which it grows. 



It is difficult to refer these marine fungi to modern families, as 

 such recent fungi have not been extensively studied except so far 

 as they affect food fish, etc. The mycelia from the Clinton group 

 may be safely called Phycomycetes, and are probably to 

 be placed near the genus Saprolegnia. Duncan^ has de- 

 scribed similar borings under the name Palaeachlya per- 

 forans, referring them also as ^^unicellular algae" to the 

 family Saprolegniae.^ These were obtained from Lower Siluric 

 f oraminif era, the Upper Siluric coral, Goniophyllum 

 pyramidal e, the Devonic coral, Calceola sandalina, 

 and a Miocene T h a m n a s t r a e a. This author did not dis- 

 tinguish species, referring to one species mycelia both coarse and 

 fine from Siluric to Tertiary. In the material under present con- 

 sideration I find three forms distinguishable both by the charac- 

 ter of the mycelium and the spherical swellings. So far as the 

 mycelium is concerned, the Clinton fungi resemble Duncan's P a - 

 1 a e a c h 1 y a ; but the spherical swellings closely resemble those 

 described by Kolliker^, found in both recent and fossil corals and 

 shells, which fungi Kolliker described but left unnamed. They 

 are also very like the Carbonic genus, Peronospor- 

 i t e s,^ whose hyphae, however, enter plant tissue and would 

 therefore seem to be either fresh- water or aerial fungi. P e r o n - 

 ospo rites has just such swellings as the Clinton fungi at the 

 ends of small hyphae, both hyphae and swellings being unmodi- 



^See Seward. Fossil plants. 1898. p. 217. 

 'Quart, jour. geol. soc. Lond. 1876, p. 205. 



^At the time Duncan wrote Saprolegniae were considered algae, but are 

 now classed with fungi. 

 *Zeitsch. Wiss. Zool. 1859. 10: 215. 

 'See Seward. Fossil plants. 1898. p. 217. 



