120 
CASH AND HICK : ON FOSSIL FUNGI. 
includes the much- written- of potato fungus, Phytophthora 
infestans, the common Cystopus candidus and other forms. 
Our second slide exhibits a section that has been cut 
parallel to the first from the same piece of material, and is 
in most respects identical with it. It shows the section 
of the petiole of Bachiopteris LcCcattii, together with the 
fungus-bearing tissue, whose appearances have been described. 
An examination of this slide is fully confirmatory of all that 
has been said with regard to the fungoid growths under 
description, but does not enable us to clear up doubtful 
points. The hyphao are more thickly crowded, however, and 
are somewhat more numerous, and show very clearly the 
distinction between the contained protoplasm and the cellulose 
walls. On the nature and origin of the spherical bodies 
which we regard as oospores, the slide throws no additional 
light, save that its appearances are in no way inconsistent 
with that hypothesis. 
The third slide is altogether different from the other two, 
and has been cut from material obtained from a different pit. 
It consists of small and disconnected fragments of vegetable 
tissue, which are most probably the broken debris of several 
plants. In and between these fragments are immense num- 
bers of small round bodies, which can hardly be anything 
else than the spores of some fungus. Not a trace of mycelium, 
however, nor any other filamentous structure to which they 
may be related have we been able to discover. Under these 
circumstances it is impossible to do anything more than 
speculate on their probable affinities. There is, however, one 
group of existing fungi whose habitat closely resembles that 
of these spores. "We allude to the Myxomycetes, that curious 
order of Zygospores which, from the absence of any definite 
mycelium and the strange phenomena of movements etc. 
they exhibit, have sometimes been regarded as animals rather 
than plants. These forms occur commonly on old and de- 
