220 
PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
with the ordinary secretion of the part, would seem to be a natural 
consequence." 
It will be seen from the foregoing quotations what this author 
endeavours to prove in the pages of his essay. So far as we can see, 
he has abundantly shown, if not the connection of elephantiasis, at 
least the undoubted relation of chyluria to the presence of these 
parasitic nematodes. 
PKOGEESS OF MICEOSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 
The Fecundation of Certain Fungi. — The ' Academy ' (March 13) 
[which by the way is a thoroughly able paper] has an interesting note 
on M. von Tieghem's researches on the above subject. This savant 
has recently brought before the French Academy some interesting 
experiments on the fecundation of certain fungi (Basidiomycetes), con- 
firming the statements of M. Reess, to which he refers, and throwing 
fresh light on the interesting question of sexuality in these lower 
organisms. M. Eeess made his observations on the common dung 
fungus Cojprinus stercorarius, and M. von Tieghem selected for his 
Coprinus ephemeroides. Placing a spore of this little agaric in a de- 
coction of dung, and confining it in a cell, under the microscope, he 
found it soon germinated, producing a branched cellular mycelium, 
anastomosing, not only from branch to branch, but from cell to cell, 
along each branch ; the branches being about 0 • 003 mm. in diameter. 
In most cases the mycelium tubes produced, in the course of five or 
six days, tufts of narrow rods (baguettes), springing, sometimes to the 
number of twenty, from the tip of a short lateral branch. Each of 
these rods divided itself into two smaller ones (hdtonnets). The upper 
one detached itself and fell away; the lower one grew at its base 
and divided again. When this had gone on two or three times, the 
basilar joint fell off, and there remained only a pedicel and a great 
number of small white rods lying by it. These were 0 • 004 mm. to 
0*005 mm. long and 0-0015 mm. wide, and often having a brilliant 
granule at each end. When these rods were sown in the dung decoction 
they did not germinate. In another set of similar experiments, no rods 
appeared, but about the seventh or eighth day — that is to say, when 
the little rods in the contemporary experiments had separated from 
the stems, certain lateral branches swelled at their summits, forming 
large vesicles, separated by partitions from the pedicels bearing them. 
Sometimes these vesicles, which contained a dense protoplasm and 
usually exhibited three vacuoles, grew in loose tufts. M. von Tieghem, 
having thus obtained the little rods and the vesicles in separate grow- 
ing cells, brought them together, and saw the "rods" attach them- 
selves to the vesicles, and empty into them their contents. The 
vesicles thus fecundated lost their vacuoles, formed two internal 
