CHAPTER IIl--SPORES OF FUNGI. 73 
shown, in the basidia of Empusa and species of Entomophthora. The ripe spores 
are thrown to a distance of 2-3 cm. and adhere by the remains of the ejected proto- 
plasm to the bodies against which they strike. The ripe spores of Coprinus, especially 
C. stercorarius, are abjected from the basidia by the same mechanism, as Brefeld 
informs us’. They are attached, as Fig. 30 shows in the case of other Hymenomy- 
cetes, to the extremities of very slender sterigmata which spring four together from 
the apex of a basidium. The four spores of each basidium are abjected at the same 
moment, and a small drop of fluid which issues from the sterigma shows that it is 
open at the apex, while a small quantity is also seen to be attached to each spore as 
it drops. The similarity in the basidia and in the mode of formation of the spores 
in all the Hymenomycetes and other facts also make it probable that the process of 
abjection is widely spread, perhaps occurs universally, in this group of Fungi; but 
more extended investigations are still needed to clear up this point. 
The following are some of the other facts just’referred to. It has long been known 
“that the hymenium of a Hymenomycete when turned upwards becomes gradually 
sprinkled over with free spores, and if it is turned downwards, spores fall from it in 
large quantities. Some of them fall in an exactly vertical direction, as appears from 
the fact that the spores which fall on a piece of paper placed under the free hymenium 
of an Agaric are arranged in radial lines answering exactly to the radial arrangement 
of the lamellae on the pileus. 
These phenomena are in themselves quite compatible with simple abscision as 
described in the preceding pages, but they do not exclude the supposition that the 
spores were abjected with some small exertion of force, as Brefeld has also 
pointed out?. On the other hand a dispersion of the spores is observed in these 
Fungi in other directions than that of the vertical. The statement of Bulliard? 
has recently been confirmed by Hoffmann and de Seynes, that many spores fall from 
the hymenium of an Agaric when turned downwards far beyond the line which 
corresponds to the margin of the pileus. Hoffmann saw white clouds of spores 
rise like smoke from Polyporus destructor when there was a slight movement 
in the air, ‘but when the air in the closed chamber was perfectly still no spores 
reached a glass plate hung at a distance of only three quarters of an inch above 
the plant, while those which fell on a glass plate two inches and a half beneath 
the Fungus covered nearly uniformly up to the margin a space of more than six 
times the circumference of the Fungus.’ Other Hymenomycetes gave similar results. 
These observations point to abjection of the spores, but do not absolutely prove it, 
because the facts described might be due to movements of torsion in the sterigmata, 
such as were noticed above on page 72. 
Lastly, it may be observed that the abjection of the spores in Leitgeb’s Completoria * 
may also have been caused by the mechanism which has already been described ; 
Leitgeb’s own explanation I have not been able to understand. 
Section XVIII. 3. Endogenous spore-formation (Endogene Sporenbildung), 
Many spores are produced inside mother-cells, the wall of which remains intact till the 
spores are ripe and forms a spore-receptacle or sporangium. 
The sporangia are mostly acrogenous cells which are either persistent on their 
sporangiophore, or are removed from it by abscision, as in Cystopus and other 

! Schimmelpilze, III, p. 65. 
2 Ib. p. 132. 
* Champignons de France, I, p. 51. 
* Sitzungsber. d. Wiener Acad. Bd. 84, July, 1881. 
