FERTILISA TION 



55 



ally carried out. The last observation, if verified, is rather 

 strange, as the spores, when fallen, must be. regarded as fully 

 matured ; it seems to be rather an anomaly that a mature 

 fruit should be fertilised, rather than when in , an immature 

 condition. This much, then, has been related by Smith in a 

 very circumstantial manner, and from it he argues that in the 

 Agaricini the cystidia produce the spermatozoids, by means of 

 which the spores are fertilised, either upon the hymenium, or 

 after they have fallen to the ground. During twenty years 

 we have not heard that his observations have been confirmed, 

 or that the question has been set at rest. 



Long before the above investigations Oersted claimed to 

 have discovered a sort of conjugation in the filaments of the 



Pig. 33. — Development of sporocarp in Podosphaera. After De Bary. 



mycelium of Agarics, but this is now regarded as an error of 

 observation. 



In 1872 C. H. Peck supposed that he had found in a 

 species of Agaricus " spores produced in globose asci, borne on 

 a thick, tapering, penetrating peduncle, twelve or more spores 

 in the ascus." This again was doubtless a faulty observation, 

 for other mycologists failed to find the asci on the gills of the 

 specimens determined and furnished by the original observer. 

 M. de Seynes subsequently attributed the assumed asci to 

 cystidia, and the supposed sporidia to external and internal 

 granules. Hence it may be affirmed that none of the sup- 

 posed processes of fertilisation in Basidiomycetes have been 

 confirmed, and until that is done they must be regarded as 

 asexual. 



Another one-fourth of the total number of species of Fungi 



