THE REPRODUCTION OF ASCOMYCETES. 
139 
M. Tulasne are not so difficult to get to germinate ; they have not 
always need of a nourishing liquid in order to develop and emit 
some filaments. 
The Cucurhitaria Lahurni is a beautiful species of Asco- 
mycete, which is frequently found upon the dead branches of 
the Cytisus Laburnum and allied plants. The sperm atiaphore 
branches isolated in some special conceptacles, are short, massed, 
and soldered together ; their cells are swelled out and globulous, 
so as to lead one to the belief of their being some very small 
stylospores. If one compares these short and amassed branches 
with those of the spermatia with those of the Dothidea rihesa (17), 
one is convinced of the great analogy which exists between them, 
and one recognises that they are identical. 
The polymorphism of the stylospores of this species, sometimes 
partitioned in many ways and coloured, sometimes without 
partitions and colourless, with all the intermediaries, has deter- 
mined M. Tulasne to call them under the same name. He has 
remarked still that the white stylospores occur at times together 
in a special conceptacle, which he has called pycnis leucospora. But 
these white micro-stylospores are not tout d fait, resembling the 
white stylospores found in the pycnidia, in lieu of being oval, as 
they have been represented according to the plate of M. Tulasne ; 
they are noticeably different — elongated, rather, slender curved in 
arc, more rarely rectilinear. These are veritable spermatia in all 
their characters, ^hat has really been the cause of their separa- 
tion is their facile germination, which here takes place, not in a 
nourishing liquid, where they have refused to develop themselves, 
but in pure water. Like their congeners, they swell out — it may 
be in the whole of their length, it may he by one extremity 
only — and are partitioned in very good time, so as to cause 
them to resemble some bilocular spores. Some filaments 
arise from the elongation of their extremity, but in pure water 
only are they seen to advantage. Many attempts made by 
me have given the same result : relative success upon water, com- 
plete want of success in the nutritive liquid. The brown or white 
stylospores, in place of being arrested, are remarkable for the 
facility with which they emit some germ filaments, which grow 
very rapidly. 
Another example of development in pure water, but arrested 
likewise almost immediately, is furnished by the Aglaospora 
profusa (De Not). This species possesses some very remarkable 
endothecous spores with four black cells contained in a clear 
envelope ; it is common upon the branches of Rohinia pseud-acacia. 
It possesses otherwise some oval stylospores, dew-like, and some 
long spermatia, slender, curved in an arc, born from a dense tissue, in 
which the spermatiophore arbuscles are not easily visible. These 
last are often found mixed with the preceding, or rather, are con- 
tained in some isolated spermogones. 
