CHAPTER V.—COMPARATIVE REVIEW,.—ASCOMYCETES, 199 
formed separately from the archicarps in special layers or receptacles, the 
spermogonia, and give off small spore-like cells, the spermatia, by abscision. The 
spermatia are conveyed to the archicarp and to a special receptive process of it, 
the trichogyne, and conjugate with it. These phenomena correspond in part, and, 
excepting in some points of detail which will be described further on, to those 
observed elsewhere in distinct sexual organs and processes, and without them the 
sporocarp is not developed. The organs here described in the Ascomycetes are 
therefore to be regarded in the above cases as sexual organs, the archicarps as the 
female, the antheridial branches or spermatia as the male organs. 
In the Erysipheae, Penicillium, Sordaria, and Gymnoascus conjugation has not 
been observed, but the union of the two kinds of organs is as firm as it is invariable. 
Their sexual function therefore has not been certainly proved, but it may be 
assumed to be highly probable. 
The antheridial branches are less constant and less distinct in Ascobolus and 
Melanospora. According to present observations they are not to be clearly dis- 
tinguished from the first envelope-filaments that grow round the archicarp; their 
sexual function must therefore be considered to be undetermined. The question of 
the homologies is not hereby prejudged, as will be explained in section LXVI. 
3. An archicarp is formed in the compact thallus of Polystigma rubrum 
and P. fulvum very similar to that of Collema, and in this case also the archicarp 
alone produces the ascogenous hyphae at a later period. Spermogonia and spermatia 
are likewise present, but the union of the latter with the archicarp has not been cer- 
tainly observed, perhaps owing to their extreme delicacy. Moreover the archicarp 
here makes its appearance inside a delicate (pseudo-parenchymatous) hyphal coil pro- 
duced at first as a new formation in the thallus, which may be termed the primordium of 
the sporocarp, and from it the envelope-apparatus of the sporocarp is subsequently 
developed under conditions of new formation andresorption. The archicarp is a long, 
coiled row of many cells. In this respect it is like the archicarp of the Collemaceae, 
and one extremity of it projects as in that group in the form of a trichogyne above 
the surface of the thallus, while the lower coils are concealed in the primordium. Before 
the formation of asci commences, these coils are found to be divided into portions 
containing from one to several cells and distributed in the future hypothecium, and 
from here they put out the ascogenous hyphae in the form of branches; but the 
portion which protrudes as the trichogyne perishes without taking any direct part 
in the formation of asci. All these phenomena are exactly similar to those observed 
in the Collemaceae, as will appear from the special description of a subsequent page, 
with the exception of the union of the spermatia and the presence of the primordium 
from the first concealing the archicarp, neither of which has yet been ascertained. 
4. The processes observed in Xylaria again are similar to those in Poly- 
stigma. First the appearance of a delicate primordial hyphal coil in the thallus; 
then inside that of a coiled row of large cells similar to the archicarp of Polystigma 
(named by Füisting Woronin’s hypha); finally of cell-groups distributed in the 
hypothecium from which the asci sprout, while Woronin’s hypha is to a great 
extent at least disorganised and disappears. But a piece of Woronin’s hypha 
projecting from the primordium, a trichogyne, has not been observed, and there- 
fore no visits of spermatia to it; nor is there any proof of genetic connection 
