32 On the Resting- Spores of certain Fungi. 



It appears now, from the extended observations of De Bary, 

 in a paper published very lately in Annates dies Sciences Naturelles, 

 ser. 4, vol. xx. p. 5, that resting- spores are produced at least 

 in two genera of fungi, a circumstance which, amongst others, 

 tends to show that those botanists who refer the Saprolegnios, 

 of which an account was given in the Intellectual Observer, 

 vol. iii. p. 147, to Fungi rather than Algge, are more jus- 

 tified in their notions than has sometimes been supposed. 

 Dr. Payen was perhaps the first who met with the resting- 

 spores of a fungus, while studying the potato murrain. The 

 bodies in question, which Dr. Montagne referred to a new genus, 

 Artotrogus, belonged in all probability to Peronospora infestans, 

 the parasite to which the disease is due, though it is curious 

 that this is one of the species of the genus in which resting- 

 spores have not been observed by De Bary and others. Mr. 

 Broome, about the same time, found something of a similar 

 nature in the Swede turnip. The specimens were unfortunately 

 lost, but it is most probable, from what we recollect of them, 

 that they were the resting- spores of Peronospora parasitica, 

 their probable connection with which was pointed out by my- 

 self in the Gardener's Chronicle for 1854, p. 724. Neither Dr. 

 Montagne nor Mr. Broome were at all aware, at the time of 

 the discovery of these bodies, of their relation to the two para- 

 sites in question. Tulasne appears to have been the first who 

 ascertained the production of these resting-spores in Pero- 

 nosporoz. His observations were laid before the French 

 Academy in 1854, and published in Comptes Renclus of that 

 year, for June 26. Dr. Caspary, in the following year, pub- 

 lished a memoir in the monthly transactions of the Royal 

 Academy of Berlin, in which he figures the sacs which ulti- 

 mately contain the resting-spores of three species, Peronospora 

 Hepaticce, P. densa, and P. macrosyora, under the name of 

 Sporangia, and in two species a secondary form of fruit, also 

 growing on the mycelium within the leaf, which he calls Spori- 

 dangia. This latter observation has not been confirmed, and 

 it is supposed that he has taken young sporangia for a distinct 

 form of fruit. Dr. Caspary refers to Tulasne's memoir, but he 

 informs us that his own observations were made independently, 

 before he was acquainted with it. More recently, as mentioned 

 above, De Bary has taken up the subject, and it is of his paper 

 that I purpose at present to give some account, so far as it 

 relates to the two genera Peronospora and Gystopus. I shall, 

 however, begin with Peronospora, though the paper in question 

 first gives an account of similar observations in Gi/stopus, which 

 belongs to a very different division of fungi. But not only has 

 he shown the existence of resting-spores in most of the species 

 belonging to the two genera, but he has given details of the 



