V] 



HYPOCREALES 



147 



of these spermatia have failed, and no relation of any kind has been de- 

 monstrated between them and the female organ, consequently they must be 

 regarded as no longer functional, and their original use can be inferred only 

 from their structure. Their small size, scanty contents, and large nucleus 

 suggest that they are more appropriately constituted to act as fertilizing 

 agents than as a means of vegetative propagation. 



The archicarp first appears as a multinucleate hypha, which becomes 

 septate and somewhat elaborately coiled. The base can usually be traced 

 to a vegetative filament; the apex ends freely in the mass of uninucleate 

 mycelial cells (fig. 102); most of the cells of the archicarp contain several 

 nuclei, but a few are uninucleate. The archicarps usually develop singly, 

 generally below or near a stoma, through which vegetative filaments project 

 (fig. 107). These projecting hyphae were regarded by Fisch and Frank as 



Fig. 106. Polystigvia ritbruni DC. ; sper- 

 mogonium, x 250; after Blackman and 

 Welsford. 



Fig. 107. Polystigma ruhrum DC; vege- 

 tative hj'phae projecting through stoma 

 above archicarp, x 900 ; after Blaclcman 

 and Welsford. 



trichogynes, but Blackman and Welsford, and later Nienburg, failed to 

 trace any connection between them and the coiled archicarps. On the 

 contrary, the latter end blindly within the stroma with or without branching, 

 and it is only quite occasionally that they can even be traced upwards 

 towards the stomata. 



Nienburg observed the formation of a pore between a multinucleate 

 cell at the base of the archicarp and the large uninucleate cell next in 

 order to it. At a later stage he found that the uninucleate cell had become 

 binucleate, the nuclei being at first somewhat different in structure, and 

 that certain large cells, which apparently developed from it, also contained 



