138 
THE REPRODUCTION OF ASCOMYCETES. 
gated in a considerable manner up to attaining more than a 
hundred times their primitive length, the partition takes a 
perfectly special tint : it is black in colour, just as takes place in 
the greater part of the Ascomycetes ; it exhibits a colouration 
characteristic of this group of Fungi. Also, in this case the 
germination is not arrested by any indications of filaments, but it 
took place with a considerable vigour. The liquid was probably 
better appropriated by this species than by all others, and I have 
no doubt that with any bungling no notable increase of the sper- 
matia of any one species would be possibly obtained. It is 
necessary, in fact, to furnish them with a nourishment similar to 
that which they find in the bark which allows of their develop- 
ment. It had there in the preparation a veritable grey felting of 
crossed and interlaced filaments. It does not proceed from strange 
spores, like that which frequently produces itself in the seed beds 
of this nature, and one might assert it for two reasons : the 
first is that the development has gone on day after day ; the 
second is that this development does not show itself upon isolated 
spermatia, but on the assembly of the spores — that is to say, upon 
thousands, presenting all, at one and the same time, the same modi- 
fication. When any strange spores have introduced themselves 
into a cell, it is always isolated, although there all the sjDermatia 
were in the same state at the time. In pure water it had no deve- 
lopment at all ; in the water held in suspension by the gum these 
germinations, unmingled, as I have said above, grow wild easily. 
A remark easy to make for the rest, and which arises from 
daily observations, is that when a prejiaration gives good re- 
sults at one point it gives also in all its points, because in nature 
these spores, all issuing from the same spermogone, are in the 
same conditions ; when one germinates, the other ought to germi- 
nate also. The examination of one point alone of the preparation 
suffices ; one has no need of searching with care if among the 
mass some are developed. One might, therefore, easily decide 
whether such or such a preparation ought to be applied or put on 
one side. 
One ought to specially signalize yet another Ascomycete, with 
red spermatia, encountered upon the chestnut trees at Chaville, 
and which ought to be considered as the spermogonial form of the 
Stictosphoeria Hoffjnanni (Tub), the spermatia, curved in an arc, and 
very slender, presenting in the nutritive liquid, a partial develop- 
ment, but quite peculiar. They grow in the nutritive liquid only, 
but in place of becoming oval by the swelling out of the whole of 
the concave part, as was the case in the Diplodias and Valsas 
cited above, a jDortion only of this partition becomes dilated, in 
such a manner that the spore appears, after two or three days, to 
be composed of one part oval, surmounted by a rather short am, 
often in prolongation of one of the sides of the partition. 
Still, all the spores which one would include in the spermatia of 
