270 
Mycologia 
easily occur if hymenium and pseudoparenchyma are homologous 
tissues. Certain patches in the midst of the branches of the cen- 
tral strand in some of my sections give an appearance, in texture 
and staining, of a tissue intermediate between hymenium and 
pseudoparenchyma. Unfortunately gelatinization is so far ad- 
vanced that no details are available. The center of each patch 
is occupied by numerous globular bodies of about the size and 
color of spores. 
Fischer’s (1890, p. 7) suggestion that the hymenium is fertile 
wherever it lines a cavity and sterile when two layers are ap- 
pressed without a space between, is untenable. Not only is pseudo- 
parenchyma developed adjacent to gleba-chambers (fig. 9), but 
basidia are borne in such narrow chambers that the space is 
literally obliterated (fig. 12). Moeller (1895, p. 31) has already 
emphasized these objections to Fis(|her’s view. The stimuli which 
guide the development of an embryonic tissue must be much more 
profound than this. 
The gleba of Simblum sphaerocephalum is traversed by stouter 
strands of tissue similar to that of the trania, constituting the 
“branches of the central strand (P)” of Fischer. Each such 
branch (figs, i, ii) runs radially outward from the central gela- 
tinous tissue of stalk and head, to merge into the volva-jelly at 
the middle of one of the meshes of the receptaculum. Each 
mesh is traversed by one such branch. Some branches are rod- 
like and reach the surface of the gleba in a circumscribed spot. 
Others are ribbon-like, and form a line on the surface of the 
gleba. Tangential sections of the surface of the gleba show the 
gleba-chambers as narrow branching slits radiating from the 
branch of the central strand and nearly at right angles to the bars 
of the receptaculum. This indicates an origin such as Eischer 
has described in other Clathraceae. The chambers probably 
result from the growth of trama-plates from the branch of the 
central strand toward the bars of the receptaculum. But no order 
was found elsewhere in the arrangement of the trama-plates or 
gleba-chambers. 
la all of our material the dense mass of spores hides the 
basidia. Probably these had already begun to gelatinize. We 
found one basidium, apparently in normal condition. It was 
