CHAPTER II.—--DIFFERENTIATION OF THE THALLUS.—MPCELIAL STRANDS. 29 
subcorticalis, Persoon. The attempts to find the fructification of these Fungi led to the 
most divergent views; but there is no need happily to repeat here and criticise 
the complete enumeration and examination of them which was given in the first 
edition of this work. Some writers, as P. de Candolle, Eschweiler, Acharius, and more 
recently Fuckel, endeavoured to prove the Rhizomorphae to be true Pyrenomycetes, 
and assigned them perithecia, some of which, according to Tulasne, were in fact 
merely galls, while others belonged to real Pyrenomycetes, which had grown on 
or close to the strands of the Agaric. Otth regarded as their fructification a species 
of Stilbum or Graphium which is sometimes found on old strands in the 
form of small black bodies of the thickness of a bristle and 3-4 mm. in length 
and giving off spores by abjunction, a view which was supported by the resem- 
blance of their structure to that of the rind of the strands, and which after all 
may in a limited sense still be correct. The question can only be decided by the 
history of the development of the Stilbum ; but this is not known, and the species may 
for the present be considered with greater probability to be a parasite on the strands. 
Other writers, as Palisot de Beauvois, and in more recent times Caspary and 
Tulasne, looked upon the Hymenomycetes, especially the woody Polyporeae, as 
the sporophores of the Rhizomorphae, partly because the two were so closely 
associated in their growth, and partly because these observers confounded the 
strand-like or membranous mycelia of the former plants with the strands of Agaricus 
melleus, the characteristic structure of which they did not properly distinguish. 
Hence Caspary, for instance, brings the Rhizomorphae themselves into genetic 
connection with the sporophores of quite different species of Polyporus, Trametes Pini, 
and Agaricus ostreatus. 
The name Rhizomorpha we now know to be superfluous; it may and should 
be dispensed with, as I have myself done above. The same may be said of the 
name Xylostroma mentioned in the preceding pages, as also of the names Himantia, 
Ozonium, Hypha, Hyphasma, Fibrillaria, Ceratonema, all of Persoon, Byssus, Dill., 
Dematium, Lk. (in part), Corallofungus, Vaill. They were applied, as is well 
known, since the time of Palisot de Beauvois to sterile mycelial strands which 
sometimes attained a great size in damp wocds, cellars, and mines, but their connection 
with distinct forms of sporophore, owing to the slight attention which was formerly 
paid to the study of mycelia, was never actually decided. 
The forms, which Fries! regarded as a distinct genus Anthiria, may also be mentioned 
in connection with sterile mycelial strands of doubtful affinity. The Anthinae, of which I 
am here speaking, and from which I exclude the section Pterula, Fr. because these appear 
to be fertile, are cylindrical or ribbon-shaped bodies an inch high on the average and 
about 1 mm. in thickness, which grow erect from a floccose mycelium largely developed 
in decaying wood and leaves, and branch in their upper part dichotomously or in 
a palmate manner. They are either ofa brightred colour (A. flammea, A. purpurea) or 
pale brown (A. pallida). They consist of a strand of parallel hyphae firmly united 
together by a homogeneous connecting substance, and are formed by the union 
of the hyphae which spread abundantly through the substratum. The bundle is 
divided at the upper end, or its hyphae separate from one another and spread on all 
sides and form the bifurcating or palmate extremities. Specimens are not unfrequently 
found with the upper end of the plant bent down towards the ground, and there 
separated into a floccose mycelium or even into net-like anastomoses. I have myself 
never seen a sporophore in these forms, though Fries says of A. flammea, ‘ affusa aqua 
secedunt sporidia’ The small cells laterally attached to the hyphae, which I have 
occasionally found in A. pallida, and which I formerly spoke of as spores, I am 
now inclined to regard as very doubtful structures. 

! Pl. homon. 169. 
