206 FUNGI. 
patches of Penicillium were found to be intermixed with another 
mould of a higher development, and far different character. 
This mould, or rather Jfucor, consists of erect branching 
threads, many of the branches terminating in a delicate globose, 
glassy head, or sporangium, containing numerous very minute 
subglobose sporidia. This species was named dlucor hyalinus.* 
The habit is very much like that of the Penicillium, but without 
any roseate tint. It is almost certain that the Afucor could not 
have been present when the Penicilliwm was examined, and the 
leaves on which it had grown were enclosed in the tin box, but 
that the Afucor afterwards appeared on the same leaves, some- 
times from the same patches, and, as it would appear, from the 
same mycelium. The great difference in the two species lies in 
the fructification. In the Penicillium, the spores are naked, and 
in moniliform threads ; whilst in JZwcor the spores are enclosed 
within globose membraneous heads or sporangia. Scarcely can 
we doubt that the Mucor alluded to above, found thus intermixed, 
under peculiar circumstances, with Penicillium roseum, is no other 
than the higher and more complete form of that species, and 
that the Penicillium is only its conidiiferous state. The pre- 
sumption in this case is strong, and not so open to suspicion as it 
would be did not analogy render it so extremely probable that 
such is the case, apart from the fact of both forms springing 
from the same mass of mycelium. In such minute and delicate 
structures itis very difficult to manipulate the specimens so as 
‘to arrive at positive evidence. If a filament of mycelium could 
be isolated successfully, and a fertile thread, bearing the fruit of 
each form, could be traced from the same individual mycelium 
thread, the evidence would be conclusive. In default of such 
conclusive evidence, we are compelled to rest with assumption 
until further researches enable us to record the assumption as 
fact.t 
Apropos of this very connection of Penicillium with Mucor, a 
similar suspicion attaches to an instance noted by a wholly dis- 
* Specimens were published under this name in Cooke’s ‘‘ Fungi Britannici 
Exsiccati,” No. 359. 
t Cooke, ‘‘On Polymorphism in Fungi,” in ‘‘ Popular Science Review.” 
