SEXUAL REPRODUCTION. 175 
melanoloma, he was more successful with Peziza omphalodes. 
As early as 1860 he recognized the large globose, sessile, and 
grouped vesicles which originate the fertile tissue, but did not 
comprehend the part which these macrocysts were to perform. 
Each of these emits from its summit a cylindrical tube, generally 
flexuous, but always more or less bent in a crozier shape, some- 
times attenuated at theextremity. Thus provided, these utricles 
resemble so many tun-shaped, narrow-necked retorts, filled with 
a granular thick roseate protoplasm. In the middle of these, 
and from the same filaments, are generated elongated clavate 
cells, with paler contents, more vacuoles, which Tulasne names 
paracysts. These, though produced after the macrocysts, finally 
exceed them in height, and seem to carry their summit so as to 
meet the crozier-like prolongations. It would be difficult to 
determine to which of these two orders of cells belongs the 
initiative of conjugation. Sometimes the advance seems to be 
on one side, and sometimes on the other. However this may be, 
the meeting of the extremity of the 
connecting tube with the summit of 
the neighbouring paracyst is a con- 
stant fact, observed over and over 
again a hundred times. There is no 
real junction between tlie dissimilar 
cells above described, except at the 
very limited point where they meet, 
and there a circular perforation may 
be discerned at the end, defined by a 
round swelling, which is either barely 
visible or sometimes very decided. 
Everywhere else the two organs may F"'6. 100.—Conjugation in Peziza 
; omphatodes. (Tulasne.) 
be contiguous, or more or less near to- 
gether, but they are free from any adherence whatever. If the 
plastic matters contained in the conjugated cells influence one 
another reciprocally, no notable modification in their appearance 
results at first. The large appendiculate cell seems, however, to 
yield to its consort a portion of the plasma it contains. One 
thing only can be affirmed from these phenomena, that the con- 
