420 ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY. [CHAP. 



and becomes spirally coiled, like a cork-screw. This 

 branch is called the ascogonium. A second branch (some- 

 times termed the pollinodiutri) is formed in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the first. This applies itself closely to 

 the ascogonium. Subsequently the ascogonium increases 

 greatly in size, and produces a number of clavate branches 

 called asci, in the interior of each of which eight spores are 

 formed. In the meantime other branches, developing into 

 closely interwoven hyphse, arise from below the ascogonium, 

 and form the dense envelope of the fruit. The production 

 of spores in asci is characteristic of a very large group of 

 Fungi. It is not probable that any act of fertilization 

 occurs in this group, though the ascogonium and "polli- 

 nodium" of such Fungi as Eurotium have been regarded 

 as sexual organs. The spores formed in the asci are 

 termed ascospores, and reproduce the ordinary form of the 

 Fungus. 



If some bread be placed in a jar and kept very wet and 

 moderately warm, its surface will, in two or three days, be 

 covered with white cottony filaments, many of which rise 

 vertically into the air, and end in rounded heads, so that 

 they somewhat resemble long pins. The organism thus 

 produced is another of the Fungi — the mould termed Mucor 

 stolonifer. 



Each rounded head is a sporangium ; the stalk on which 

 it is supported rises from one of the filaments which ramify 

 in the substance of the bread, and are the hyphce. In this 

 species the hyphse send out branches (the so-called "sto- 

 lons") which grow out from the bread, and on reaching 

 any substratum, such as the plate on which the bread rests, 

 may produce a new crop of sporangia. Each hypha is, 

 as in Penicillium, a tube provided with a tough thickish 

 structureless wall, which is composed of a form of cellulose, 



