334 DIVISION II,—COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGI. 
rhythm of their development, in accordance with the remarks in the preceding 
paragraphs, if the statement that gonidia occur on the mycelia and compound 
sporophores of the Hymenomycetes proved to be true. The statement has been made 
only ina few isolated cases. The supposed gonidia mentioned by Oersted in Agaricus 
variabilis, P. are strictly of this kind, also those of A. racemosus, P., A. vulgaris, P., 
Fistulina hepatica and Polyporus Ptychogaster, Ludwig. My own older remarks 
on Nyctalis perhaps do not strictly or perhaps do not at all belong to this connection, 
but they may nevertheless be mentioned here. 
In the case of all these statements it is distinctly to be observed, that no one of 
them puts the real nature of these gonidia or spores as they may also be called, and 
their connection with the particular species of Hymenomycetes which forms basidia, 
beyond doubt, for in no case is it clear whether they reproduce the hymenomycetous 
form or something else, or, as may possibly happen, nothing at all; usually the first 
beginnings of germination in the presumed gonidia have not been observed. The 
possibility is nowhere excluded that they belong to parasites of the particular 
Hiymenomycetes. 
The slender stipe of Agaricus racemosus, Pers. which springs from a sclerotium 
terminates in fully developed specimens in a pileus, which according to old existing 
descriptions and figures has the typical structure of the Agaricineae. The stipe is 
beset throughout its whole length with short hair-like spreading branches, which 
were compared by Fries! and Berkeley? to the sporophores of the form-genus Stilbum, 
because, like them, they abjoint at their extremities numerous spores (gonidia) arranged 
in rows and forming together a small gelatinous head. In other specimens the 
branching is more irregular and the primary stipe also ends in a head of gonidia. 
The gonidia according to Tulasne?® are ellipsoid or elongated in form and. produce 
long germ-tubes when sown in water. 
On the extremities of short mycelial strands of Agaricus vulgaris Fr. Hoffmann * 
saw here and there small cylindrical cells serially abjointed, and called them spermatia. 
Short non-septate erect simple sporophores rise according to Oersted® from the 
mycelium of Agaricus variabilis, P. and abjoint ellipsoid spores simultaneously in 
a small head at their extremities, after the manner of Corda’s form-genus Cephalo- 
sporium. 
De Seynes observed a formation of ‘gonidia’ often in large quantities on the pileus 
of Fistulina hepatica; these were abjointed singly or in tufts close beside one another 
or in rows, and were of ellipsoid form, usually about 8 x in length, and furnished with 
very thick brownish-red membranes. They were borne usually on relatively slender 
copiously branched hyphae, which appeared in many cases to spring as branches from 
the thicker hyphae of the substance of the pileus, and were found chiefly on the upper 
side of the pileus, sometimes on its surface, sometimes at a depth of a centimetre in its 
tissue, spreading through it oftentimes in enormous quantities. They were found in 
every one of the many specimens examined by De Seynes from Europe, America, and 
Asia. De Seynes observed only very feeble and almost doubtful attempts at germina- 
tion in old material. My own early notes on the subject, which I have had no 
opportunity of completing, confirm De Seynes’s statements to a great extent, but add, 
that the hyphae which produce the gonidia may also occur on the under surface of 
the pileus and between the tubuli of the hymenium, and that they were not found 

! Epicris, p. go. ? Crypt. Bot. p. 365. 
3 Fung. Carpol. I, p. 110. * Bot. Ztg. 1856, p. 158. 
® Oversigten d. Verhandl. d. k. Dan. Ges. d. Wissensch. Jan. 1865. 
