SPERMOGONES. 
33 
obtuse, or otherwise a pointed, protuberance that surmounts 
them. The margin of the orifice is sometimes furnished with 
short hairs, but is more frequently ornamented with a pencil 
of long hairs, which are stiff and erect, and of the colour of 
the enclosed spermatia. 
In many of the species of JEcidium the cups are disposed 
in a more or less regular circle, the centre of which is occu- 
pied by a group of spermogones ; at the same time, the 
corresponding spot on the opposite surface of the leaf will 
frequently be found also occupied by other spermogones — in 
some instances in greater number than on the same surface of 
the leaf on which the cups are seated. This is the case in the 
JEcidium which is found upon the leaves of the coltsfoot, and 
that of the honeysuckle. 
Very bright orange-coloured spots may be observed in 
autumn (we encountered them several times last month) upon 
the leaves of pear trees, and which are covered with little 
tubercles, at first of the same colour, but ultimately becoming 
brown. These pustules are so many spermogones belonging 
to Rcestelia cancellata , a kind of cluster-cup found in the 
same localities. These spots have long since been noticed, 
and regarded as connected with the Rcestelia, but in what 
manner has until recently been unknown. The Eev. M. J. 
Berkeley noticed them in the English Flora in 1836, or at least 
the granulations on the upper surfaces of the leaves bearing 
R. cancellata, R. cornuta, and R. lacerata, and called them 
abortive pseudoperidia. Before this (in 1804) they had been 
observed by Rebentisch. An examination of one of these 
spots under a low power of the microscope, and afterwards a 
section of one or more of the pustules, cut with a sharp razor, 
and viewed with a higher power will give an idea of the nature 
of the bodies we are attempting to describe. During the 
past summer we have noticed very similar orange spots on 
leaves of the berberry containing spermogones on both sur- 
faces, and these appeared before any cups had been found on 
that plant. In this instance no cups were produced from the 
spots on the leaves examined, and which were carefully 
noticed at intervals until they withered and fell. 
In some instances, as in Rcestelia cornuta, which is found 
on the leaves of the mountain ash, the cups are produced on 
the lower, but the spermogones almost exclusively on the 
upper surface. 
The spermogones of Peridermium Pini are white, few in 
number, and are developed, not only in the spring, but some- 
times reappear in the autumn upon the same leaves that pro- 
duced them at the commencement of the year. 
In such instances as those of the JEcidiimi of the spurge, 
VOL. HI. NO. IX. D 
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