300 
Mycologia 
through several openings. These masses, then, by direct divi- 
sion formed spores, some of usual size (io /a), some larger (up to 
40 n in diameter). If now brought to room temperature these 
small spores escaped from their cysts and swam. The larger 
ones germinated directly. He also mentions the occasional ap- 
pearance of double spores from normal sporangia. The discharge 
of large and irregular masses of protoplasm from the sporangia 
had been figured by Leitgeb as long ago as 1869, for Saprolegnia 
monoica (Jahrb. fiir Wiss. Bot. 7: 357. 1869-70). In plate 24, 
fig. 5 he shows several such masses, some with cilia at different 
points, also several double zoospores. In a species of Achlya 
from Chapel Hill, 14 I have observed several times the emptying of 
the entire protoplasm from a sporangium at the tip, the mass 
falling at once to the bottom as a long contorted rope (see above, 
p. 291). This is still further and conclusive evidence that the 
spores are discharged by internal pressure and not through their 
own motion. 
It will, of course, be understood that the variations reviewed 
above are in no sense fortuitous or accidental. They are the re- 
sults of environmental conditions and many of them may now be 
induced at will by the investigator. A discussion of my own and 
other observations in regard to environmental influences on repro- 
duction in this group will be reserved for another place. 
In closing this short review of certain variations in the details 
of sexual reproduction in the group, I feel it necessary to give a 
word of caution against the attitude adopted by Lechmere in his 
two papers in the New Phytologist, both of which are referred 
to above. In the summary of his first paper he says that “ As the 
result of keeping a species of Saprolegnia under observation for a 
period of five months it has been found possible to obtain on the 
same mycelium the methods of asexual reproduction which are 
characteristic of six different genera.” If this claim is examined 
it will be seen that outside of its own genus ( Saprolegnia ) the 
species he describes cannot with accuracy be said to show the 
methods of a sexual reproduction of any other genera except 
A planes and Leptolegnia, and even in these cases only in certain 
14 A probable hybrid. See Journal Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 30: 
63. 1914- 
