18 British Uvedinee and Ustilaginee. 
although I repeatedly examined it for them. These two 
cases, the Sempervivum and the Tragopogon, in both of 
which perfectly normal, and in the latter instance function- 
ally active, zcidiospores were produced without the presence 
of spermogonia, show, at any rate, that each individual 
zcidial cup was not the result of a spermatial fecundation. 
It may have been that in both instances the plant bore 
spermogonia before they came under observation, and 
that they both bore within them an already fecundated 
mycelium ; but this is only a supposition, and, even if it 
be admitted as possible, yet it does away entirely with 
the analogy of the sexually produced spore-beds of the 
lichen-fungi and Polystigma, in which each spore-bed is 
the result of a separate spermatial impregnation of the 
trichogyne. Nor is the case of the Uredinez with short- 
lived mycelia more tenable. If with them each ecidial 
cup is a sexual product, then it cannot arise in the first 
instance without a spermatial fecundation. But Schréter * 
has shown that when he produced the zxcidium of P. porrt 
(Sow.) by infecting the Alum schenoprasum with the 
teleutospores, the resulting zcidia were always unaccom- 
panied by spermogonia, as was also the case when they 
occurred on onion (A. cepa); and, further, he found while 
the vernal specimens of the ecidiospores of Uromyces ervi 
on Ervum hirsutum and of Puccinia galii on G. aparine 
were accompanied by spermogonia, yet those produced 
later in the year were invariably without this accompani- 
ment. If the spermatia were necessary to the development 
of the zcidia in spring, how could they be dispensed with 
by the same formation in autumn? The fact, however, 
stands that spermogonia almost always accompany zcidio- 
spores ; but not only is this the case with the true Acidia, 
but also with the analogous Caomata—analogous in as 
* Schréter, ‘‘Cohn’s Beitrage,” vol. ii, p. 83. 
