Hybernation of Fungi. 289 



places amongst modern botanists, was eagled-eyed about the 

 greater part of these spurious productions, with one or two 

 exceptions, the most prominent of which will be noted presently, 

 he was strangely misled by Unger and others as to the nature 

 of those rust-like parasitic fungi which grow on living leaves, 

 and constitute one of the greatest scourges of the cultivator. 

 Though in reality amongst the most interesting of fungi, and 

 most instructive in regard of affinity, as well as in other impor- 

 tant respects, he regarded them as scarcely worthy a botanist's 

 notice; and, indeed, though at times impressed with more or 

 less of philosophic doubt, he was inclined with Unger to regard 

 them as mere abnormal developments of the cellular tissue of 

 plants, analogous in plants to the exanthemata of animals. 



Our business is not, however, with such productions at 

 present, but with those compact fleshy or horny cellular bodies 

 which occur so often in the guise of little flat cakes, irregular 

 tuberiform masses, or seed-like organisms of a more or less 

 definite form on decayed plants, whether more or less naked or 

 buried in the midst of their pith, or other tissues, and more rarely 

 on animal substances, which have been referred by authors to 

 Sclerotium, and one or two allied genera. Fries still adheres to 

 the notion that many of these are autonomous, and I have 

 myself ventured to express an opinion that though the greater 

 part are spurious, there may possibly be some which bear fruit, 

 and are not mere conditions of other fungi, though the more 

 the matter is considered the less reason there is to believe this 

 possible. 



In the Sy sterna Mycologicum, while Fries confesses that they 

 have affinities with every order of fungi, he states as his opinion 



Fig. 2. — Thin slice from surface of Fig. 3. — Thin vertical slice of Scle- 



Sclerotium complanatum highly rotium minutum highly magnified, 



magnified. 



that they are, according to the " notio idealis," Coniomycetes 

 congested into a sort of hymenium. The notion was perhaps 

 the most unfortunate that he could have formed, for with the 

 exception of Sclerotmm betulinnm, and about three allied species, 

 none of which are properly Sclerotia, they have no relation at 

 all to Coniomycetes. In the year 1824 the cellular structure of 

 the cuticle of Sclerotium semen, and more especially the waved 



