1894] ` The Homologies of the Uredineae. 993 
thatit is scarcely perceptible. It is said that some of the 
Gerardias are parasitie, and yet who can perceive in the coun- 
tenance of any of our species any evidence of this partieular 
vegetable sin? The closely related painted cups (Castilleia), 
however, give evidence in their appearance that their habits 
are not what they should be. It is even more so with Coman- 
dra, while the Mistletoe bears the marks of degradation upon 
every organ. lt is not otherwise with the Carpophytes. When 
some ancestral seaweeds became saprophytic and parasitic, . 
that structural degeneration of parts began which gave us the 
many kinds of fungi. No one may now trace with certainty 
the genetic line of the fungi, but that they originated from 
holophytic ancestors cannot be doubted; nor can there be rea- 
sonable doubt that they have become structurally more and 
more modified the further they have departed from holophytic 
habits. The holophyte requires masses of chlorophyll-bearing 
cells, or as we commonly express it, its vegetative organs must 
be well developed, but the hysterophyte has no use for such 
tissue, and consequently, its vegetative organs are undeveloped. 
The more perfectly the parasite adapts itself to its host the 
greater may be its departure from the structure of its vegeta- 
tive organs which its holophytic ancestors developed. In like 
manner, the more perfectly the parasite merges itself into its 
host, and in a sense becomes a part of it, the more may it 
use the host tissues for protection and support, and the less is 
it necessary for it to develop protective tissues of its own. 
Thus we have in the fungi not only a degeneration of the 
vegetative tissues, but the reproductive organs have likewise 
undergone much degenerative modification. 
We here regard the Uredineae as degenerated Cup-Fungi 
(Discomyceteae), with their cups (apothecia) obsolescent, and 
constituting the vaguely defined teleutosori. As suggested 
above, there is here no need of that abundant accessory tissue 
which in the Cup-Fungi forms a protective envelope (exciple) 
around the hymenial mass, since the asci (“teleutospores”) 
develop beneath the protecting epidermis of the host. The 
host-tissues in the case of the Uredineae, act the part of the ex- 
ciple in the normal cup-fungi. The apothecia of the cup- 
