5.] Vegetable Physology. 225 



Two new genera are established : Ar- 

 1 species {Ustilago subinclusa and U. 

 oaryeis . separated from Ustilago by peculiarities of germination, and 

 Ustilaginoidea, a most peculiar genus, founded on Patouillard'a Tilletia 

 oryzce and on a new species found by Mdller on Setaria Crus-Ardece in 

 Brazil. Material for the study of the fungus on rice was obtained from 

 Barclay in India. This fungus which causes a swelling of the ovaries 

 of the rice plant to several times the normal breadth of the grain and 

 which has the external appearance of a smut, has nothing to do with 

 Tilletia, but seems to belong to some other group of fungi. Its prin- 

 cipal peculiarities are (1) the production of a large number of smut- 

 like spores on the outer part of the transformed grain, the interior of 

 the same being occupied by a hard mass of nonsporiferous hyphse sug- 

 gesting an immature sclerotium ; (2) germination in a manner totally 

 different from that of any other smut spores and resembling that of 

 some Ascomycetes, i. e. by the development of a much branched septate 

 mycelium which, in dilute Niihrlosung, bears succedaneously on the 

 ends of the hyphse, small, oval, colorless, nongermiuating conidia, and 

 in concentrated Nahrlosuug omits these conidia and develops in their 

 stead and also anywhere on the walls of thehyphse, sessile dark green- 

 ish-black, echinulate, thickwalled spores one in a place or sometimes two 

 together, one above the other. In the species received from Brazil 

 most of the dark spores had fallen off and the development of the 

 central mass of hyphae had proceeded a step further, being changed into 

 a true sclerotium with a black rind and an internal thickwalled white 

 pseudoparenchyma. Additional facts are promised as soon as these 

 sclerotia can be induced to germinate. The descriptions are followed 

 by a discussion of the relationship of the smuts to each other and to 

 other fungi. A full account of culture methods and some additional 

 notes on fungi are promised for Heft XIII to appear soon. 



Incidentally Dr. Brefeld pays his compliments to the perfunctory 

 grinders out of species : "The accidental circumstance that the all 

 naming Patouillard has given to the fungus on rice the name TUletia 

 oryzce shows once more how worthless are the namings of a spore 

 material without the developmental history. The latter shows that in 

 Patouillard's supposed Tilletia oryzce we have to do not with a Tilletia 

 and not even with a smut fungus but with a form out of the highest 

 group of fungi." This is quite to the point. The labors of the " all 

 naming" mycologists of the past have filled this part of systematic 

 botany with a mass of rubbish mountain high, and still the brave work 

 goes on, exactly as if it were not known that fungi are exceedingly 

 16 



