288 M. C. Montagne's Organography and Physiologic 



qucntly quaternate, are seated on their apices ; in other words, these 

 organs are exosporous. 



As is the case with the male organs of Taryionia, this organiza- 

 tion, correctly seen and tolerably figured by Micheli* a century 

 since, and in more recent times by Bulliard, had been cast into obli- 

 vion by the most celebrated botanists of our times, who had lost the 

 trace of it. It is but a short time since it has been called to mind 

 and established, that the immortal Florentine, with very imperfect 

 instruments, had nevertheless very correctly observed nature, and 

 was the only one who had done sot. 



The paraphyses {Basilar zellen y Corda) are elongated, tubular, caeci- 

 form cells, placed parallel the one to the other, like the pile of vel- 

 vet. In most cases they are the termination of the filaments of the 

 parenchym of the hymenophore, or of the trame of the gills of Aga- 

 rics, the prickles of Hydnum, &c. Some, as is the case also with 

 basidia, are furnished even by the outermost of the two layers of 

 cells which accompany the trame. 



The basidia (Lev., Cord., sporophores, Berk.) placed between these 

 paraphyses, and, like them, tubular, are distinguished not only by 

 their being rather longer, which makes them project perceptibly be- 

 yond the surface of the hymenium, but, besides this, because they 

 contain, before the maturity of the sporidia, a coloured opake juice, 

 clouded by an innumerable quantity of granules and some drops of oil, 



* Micheli indeed observed that the sporidia were exogenous, and he has 

 figured their quaternate arrangement in Coprinus, but it is not correct that 

 he was acquainted with the basidia ; the bodies figured by Micheli, which 

 have been supposed to be what has been lately observed by so many myco- 

 logists, being merely the little hairs with which the gills are often fringed. 

 This will at once be found to be the case if the letter-press be compared with 

 the figures. On pointing this out to Dr. Montagne, whose love of science 

 is equalled by his love of truth, he most kindly and candidly replied, " J'ai 

 revu les planches de Micheli que vous citez et relu le texte. II parait par 

 celui-ci que ce savant n'a pas vu le fond des choses, et a cette epoque, 

 certes il est etonnant qu'il ait merae si bien vu. Je conviens avec vous 

 qu'il n'est pas le moins question du monde des basidies dans le texte, mais 

 Micheli y parle tres clairement de la disposition quaternaire des spores, qu'il 

 indique pi. 73, fig. h" 



Miiller's figure of Ag. comatus shows correctly the sporidia seated on the 

 spicules of the basidia. The eyes of modern mycologists were for years 

 blinded by Link's celebrated paper, or the real structure would long since 

 have been recognised. The modern re-discovery is due to Ascherson ; at 

 least he is the first who made it known. — M. J. B. 



\ An excellent history of this subject may be found in the memoirs of 

 Berkeley and Leveille on the hymenium, and in the third volume of the 

 ' Icones Fungorum ' of Corda, who claims the honour of having first con- 

 ducted naturalists into the path of truth. None of these authors mention 

 the opinion which Palisot de Beauvais proclaimed in ' Encyclopedic Metho- 

 dique,' in the article Champignons. This savant holds, that the bodies which 

 Micheli took for spores are not the true seeds, but an heterogeneous powder 

 which the wind carries upon the gills or the eggs of insects. The grains, he 

 says, are enclosed in the gills between their coats. [This is of a piece with 

 his eccentric notion, that the reproductive bodies of mosses are contained in 

 the columella.— M. J. B.] 



