NEW OR CRITICAL BRITISH FUNGI. 
45 
acute branchlets, each bearing at its tip a single colourless, smooth, 
elliptical conidium, 4’5-5 x 3 p. 
Forming a very delicate white bloom on the peridia of old speci- 
mens of Physarum leucopus. 
Dublin. (Dr. McWeeney.) 
Mortierella candelabrum, Van TiegJi. 
Mycelium white, scanty, dichotomously branched ; fertile hyphas 
erect, 1-1*5 mm. high, colourless, base incrassated, becoming very 
slender upwards, branches usually corymbose, incrassated at the base 
and tapering to a point, sporangia apical, globose, spores sub- 
globose, variable in size, colourless, 4-10 p diameter ; chlamydo- 
gonidia interstitial or terminal on short lateral branches of the 
mycelium, spherical, elliptical, or irregular, up to 40 p diameter. 
Mortierella candelabrum, Van Tieghem & Mon., Ann. Sci. Nat., 
Ser. 5, Yol. xvn., p. 348, PI. 24, figs. 99-102. 
On pileus of Cantharellus (H. T. Soppitt). A variety of the 
present species has been described as British, but the type form has 
not, I believe, been previously recorded. 
Some Observations on Puccinia Bistorta, Str. 
By H. T. Soppitt. 
In July, 1892, Messrs. J. Needham and H. Pickles, of Hebden 
Bridge, were successful in finding for the first time in Yorkshire a 
uredine infesting the leaves of Polygonum Bistorta , a plant which 
occurs in profusion in the woods and fields of the Hebden Valley. 
A few weeks later (August 28th), while visiting the locality, I 
collected a quantity of the fungus for the purpose of study, and 
on examination determined the plant to be Puccinia Bistortce , Str. 
(= P. Bistorta , D.C.). With a view to making observations on the 
life-history of the fungus, I established in my garden a number 
of healthy plants of Polygonum Bistorta , and by a series of careful 
experimental cultures have convinced myself that this species 
affords a somewhat remarkable illustration of metoecism, which has 
been fully borne out by numerous observations made in the field. 
My first experiment was on April 25th of the present year, on 
which date the teleutospores were in a state of germination ; these 
were applied, together with promycelial spores, to the leaves of 
Polygonum Bistorta, and covered with a bell-glass for several days. 
This I repeated on May 9th, using additional plants, but in neither 
case was there the slightest result. On May 6th the botanists 
above mentioned, during a ramble in the Hebden Valley, met with 
an iEcidium infesting the leaves and stems of Conopodium 
denudatum , and they particularly noticed that the fungus only 
occurred on plants that grew among or near to Polygonum Bistorta. 
