290 M. C. Montagne's Organography and Physiologic 



nucleus is usually consistent, rarely fluid, and at length assumes, 

 within certain limits, various colours. They are white, rose-coloured 

 ochraceous, ferruginous, purple-brown, or black ; and Fries, in the 

 ' Systema Mycologicum*,' has availed himself of the fact, that the 

 same colour prevails in allied species, to form the principal sections 

 in the methodic distribution of the genus Agaricus. 



The anthers (anthera, Klotzsch, cystidia, LeV., antheridia, polli- 

 naria, Corda) are a third kind of vesicular or tubular cells which 

 occur in the hymenium of some Agarics and many Boleti. Accord- 

 ing to Corda, these cells do not arise from the trama descending from 

 the pileus, but their base is lost amongst the cells of the nearest of 

 the two layers usually interposed between the trama and hymenium. 

 This is at least the result of the examination of the greater part of 

 the figures in which he has figured these organs. Sometimes, in 

 certain Coprini for example, the anthers are even placed in a little 

 hollow in the surface of the hymenium, which they considerably ex- 

 ceed. These organs, which Micheli considered as buttresses destined 

 to keep the gills separate from one another, and to prevent their 

 mutual agglutination, because doubtless he had not observed them 

 in the tubes of Polypori, where the notion is inapplicable ; these or- 

 gans, to which Bulliard already attributed a fecundating property, 

 though he confounded them with others which have not the least 

 analogy with them ; these organs, finally, whether regarded or not 

 as grains of pollen sprinkled over the surface of the hymenium f, are 

 formed of a single indehiscent, extremely thin and transparent, cylin- 

 drical, conical or acuminate cell, filled with a mucilaginous, limpid, co- 

 lourless juice, or rarely coloured by a light tint of yellow or bistre X, in 

 which float extremely fine molecules. This mucilage, at a later pe- 

 riod, exudes from the cell, and appears at its tip in the guise of rounded 

 drops. Corda assures us that the anthers appear before the evolu- 

 tion of the basidia, and that they disappear when the sporidia are 

 mature. It is to the viscid nature of the juice which they pour out 

 that we must attribute the agglutination of the spores round the 

 cystidia of Leveille, when these reproductive bodies have abandoned 

 their supports. The organs considered as endowed with the pro- 

 perty of fecundating the sporidia have been observed in a certain 

 number of species only, which however should not invalidate the 

 opinion of the authors who assign them this distinction, since even 

 in Mosses, where the presence of these organs is averred, there are 

 a great number of species in which they could not be found. 



* In a later and newly published work, ' Epicrisis Systematis Mycolo- 

 gici,' he has attempted a new arrangement of the genus, founded principally 

 upon the structure of the trama of the gills or subhymenial tissue ; but we 

 do not find that he has rendered the determination of the species of this 

 difficult genus more easy, and we still prefer the former arrangement, with 

 a few exceptions. [In this opinion of Dr. Montagne I most entirely con- 

 cur. I do not know in the whole field of Botany a more masterly effort of 

 genius than the arrangement of this genus in the 4 Syst. Myc' — M. J. B.] 



*f* Corda (Ic. Fung. iii. p. 44) establishes this comparison, and supports 

 it by observations and reasoning which appear conclusive. 



X In Ay. balaninus, Berk., they are of a deep purple. — M. J. B. 



