372% DIVISION IIl-—MODE OF LIFE OF THE FUNGI. 
Here their further growth in length ceases; but now begins, sometimes even within 
the soft inner layers of the skin itself, the successive abjunction apparently in small 
quantities of longish cylindrical gonidia, known from their shape as cylinder-gonidia, 
partly on the extremities of the primary branches, partly on short lateral branchlets 
(Fig 165 2). From the place of their formation these pass at'once into the blood 
which fills the cavity of the body, where they elongate to twice or several times their 
original size, and divide repeatedly by transverse walls, and then begin to develope like 
Sprouting fungi, i.e. they produce repeated orders of similiar cells by terminal and 
lateral sprouting (Fig. 165 C). These cells are disseminated through the blood 
by the movements of the insect and fill it by degrees in a dense mass. They 
also penetrate into the blood-cells or are embraced by them in the conrse of the 
amoeboid movement of the latter (Fig. 165 C, d). They grow at the expense 
of the blood, which diminishes in quantity to such a degree that the insect at length 
loses its normal turgidity, becomes soft and relaxed and in this state dies. As soon as 
death has taken place all the sprout-cells begin to develope rapidly at the expense of 
the substance of the dead body into copiously branching hyphae, which not only fill 
the entire cavity of the body which till now contained the blood with a dense weft 
and expand it to its former size in the turgescent state, but grow in a dense mass 
through all parts of the body, except the intestinal canal which remains empty, and 
to a great extent absorbs them. A body is thus formed in 1-2 days’ time which 
retains the shape of the living insect, but consists of a close weft of fungal hyphae with 
some small remains of the body of the insect. This Fungus-body with the form of 
an animal has the biological peculiarities of a sclerotium. It can give rise directly to 
fresh stromata, and can do this in a few weeks after its formation if it lies in a moist 
state; if it is dried, it passes into a resting-state the maximum duration of which is 
not exactly determined, but it may certainly continue for some months without pre- 
judice to the power of further development. Such is the course of development of 
Cordyceps in its simplest form. 
But deviations from this course and complications of it occur not unfrequently, 
of which the following are the most important. If its ascospores are sown in water 
or in nutrient solutions without a living host, they germinate and the germ-tubes 
develope hyphae which branch with more or less copiousness according to the amount 
of nourishment supplied ; in water only small plants are produced with few or no 
branches (Fig. 165 A, a, 5). Some of the branches spread as a mycelium in the 
nutrient solution, and have the power, like the hyphae on the inner surface of the cater- 
pillar’s skin, of abjointing cylinder-gonidia. It is true that this has not been observed in 
the species in question, but it may be safely assumed since it has been observed in 
Botrytis Bassiana, which agrees with Cordyceps in all these biological relationships. 
Other branches of the germ-plants rise erect from the fluid into the air and branch, 
forming whorls of ramifications on the extremities of which they serially and successively 
abjoint gonidia (see p. 66), The first gonidia on the young germ-plants are cylindrical 
like those in the body of the insect (Fig. 165 A, 4), only usually shorter. All the 
succeeding ones, even the second in arow which began with a cylindrical gonidium, 
are spherical in form; they may therefore be called round or aerial gonidia. The 
mycelium also which is developed in the dead body of the caterpillar very often 
produces gonidia of this kind only and no cylindrical ones. 
