418 DIVISION III.—MODE OF LIFE OF THE FUNGI. 
gations which followed quickly on those of Schwendener were so extremely clear that 
they were calculated to raise the probability of the view and the conviction of its truth 
to the highest point, especially as Famintzin, Baranetzki and Woronin had previously 
isolated Cystococcus and Nostocaceae from Parmelieae, Cladonieae and Peltigera 
and cultivated them further as Algae with independent power of vegetation,—a mode 
of proceeding which was carried out by Bornet in some other species. Cystococcus was 
reproduced in abundance in these experiments from swarm-spores. 
Still Schwendener’s view continued to encounter a strong opposition. It is not so 
easy to shake off the yoke of the traditions in which men have been brought up. The 
same early instruction which led me to a guarded expression of my hypothesis of the 
Collemaceae and made Schwendener at first regard it as rash, had so fixed the convic- 
tions of many who had devoted themselves specially to lichenology, that they rejected 
sometimes with indignation a view which ‘pitilessly robbed their favourite Lichens 
of their independent existence and turned them by the stroke of a magician’s wand into 
a spider-like tyrant Fungus and a captured and enslaved Alga.” These words of Crombie 
briefly indicate the point of view of the ‘lichenologists,’ and a paper by the same writer, 
translated by von Krempelhuber in Flora, 1875, gives a condensed account of the 
line of argument pursued by the opposition, and to this paper the reader is referred. 
The arguments advanced scarcely touched the heart of the question. Appeal was 
made to earlier statements respecting the origination of hyphae from ‘ gonidia’ and 
gonidia from hyphae, which could not however stand the test of critical examination. 
Körber! himself, the most acute in the search for effective arguments, admits the decisive 
facts. He says that the hypha produced by the germination of the spore must meet 
with the ‘gonidia ’ specifically belonging to it, that is, coming from the particular Lichen- 
species, if it is to give rise to a normal Lichen. But this hypha and whatever else there is 
in the Lichen-thallus except the ‘gonidia’ do not belong toa Fungus, buttothe Lichen, and 
the ‘gonidia’ which are specifically necessary are no Algae, but free independent Lichen- 
gonidia which have become ‘asynthetic.’ It is therefore a simple case of change of 
name. That this is not the case as regards the Fungus-portion of the Lichen need not 
be restated here. The view that the lower Algae which vegetate where Lichens are 
found are Lichen-gonidia escaped from the thallus originated with Wallroth and was 
often expressed after him?. It was excusable in the year 1825; but our knowledge of 
the lower Algae had reached a point in 1874 which no longer permitted this summary 
mode of dealing with them. With the needful limitations they must be admitted as 
Algae in the sense which accords with our present views. The principal limitation is, 
that the gonidium is an Alga which enters into the Lichen-thallus and may in some cases 
leave it again, and this position has never been shaken. 
The orthodox lichenologists had always one objection in reserve. They had the right 
to require and could not help requiring that it should be shown how a Lichen-thallus 
proceeds from the germ-tube of the spore and from the supposed Alga. Without 
complete proof that this takes place Schwendener’s view was only a hypothesis, and 
the more surprising the hypothesis was the more reasonable was it to say, that perhaps 
there were things still unknown to us at the bottom of the whole matter, the discovery of 
which might settle the question in another and unexpected manner. 
Schwendener’s observation of the entrance of the hyphae of an unknown Fungus into 
the jelly of algal colonies, which appear as constituents of Collemaceae, could not be 
accepted as decisive, because it is not only possible but certain that this may happen 
with several Fungi which are not Lichen-Fungi. Bornet’s observations and his and 
Treub’s experiments in cultivation made some advance towards the decision of the 
question, but their results were still imperfect. It was not till it was understood that the 

} Zur Abwehr d. Schwendener-Bornet’schen Flechtentheorie, Berlin, 1874. 
* See E. Fries, Lichenogr. Europ. XX.—Kiitzing in Linnaea, 1833;—Id., Phycol. generalis, p. 167. 
—Hicks in Quarterly Journ. Micr. Sc. VIII, p. 239, and new series, I, p. 157. 
