now MUSHROOMS ARE REPRODUCED. 
79 
females will produce anthers and pollen, which conclusively 
shows that not only are ovules, spores, seeds, and eggs not in 
themselves male or female, hut the produce itself of these eggs 
is inherently hermaphrodite. It is convenient to name many 
animals and plants 64 male ” and 44 female,” because they are 
almost but not entirely so. Even in the case of the Equisitaceae, 
Sachs is obliged to qualify his terms of regarding these plants, 
and say that on the germination of the spores 44 the prothallia 
are, in general , dioecious ” ( 44 Handbook,” p. 363). And on Ferns 
the same qualification of terms is found, for under the latter 
head he says (p. 343) : 44 The prothallia show a tendency to be 
dioecious.” 
Several papers have been published of late on the reproduc- 
tive process in the Basidiomycetes , and the writers of these 
papers have noted (with me) the diverse mycelia seen amongst 
the germinating spores ; but I am convinced that the threads 
which produced antherozoids, as seen by Van Tieghem, came 
from the cystidia and not the spores. When a mass of spores 
and threads are seen in a solution of horse-dung, nothing 
is more difficult than to decide for certain whether the threads 
really come from the spores or not, and the spores of Goprinus 
radiatus could not possibly have been 44 sown ” on any decoction 
without cystidia likewise falling upon the liquid. The 44 rod-like ” 
bodies described by Van Tieghem read remarkably like an illus- 
tration of the well-known fact of the threads of many fungi 
breaking up into Bacteria at the tips. In the many Agarics I 
have examined, it invariably happens with me that after a spore 
is pierced it discharges a single cell, which developes directly 
into a new individual, exactly as is seen in Chara, but an un- 
pierced spore may produce a thread of indefinite length ; now 
if this thread is attacked by the spermatozoids, it will iu its 
turn produce this single primordial cell of a new fungus, or if 
the mere undifferentiated liquid contents of the cystidium 
should pass over the thread from an unpierced spore, it there 
gives rise (at the point of contact) to the primordial cells. 
The persistence of form in spores, and especially the pierced 
spores, under extraordinary conditions, is something remarkable ; 
for instance, repeated violent boiling has no effect on the form 
and colour of the spore, and in the cases where the spermato- 
zoids are attached no amount of boiling disengages them ; if 
anything, the boiling seems to make the piercing more distinct 
to the eye. I do not find conidia or gemmae resist boiling in 
this manner, and certainly no bulbil or bud from a flowering 
plant would maintain its form under these conditions. As for 
the unpierced spores, I believe their life to be of the very 
shortest duration (not twenty-four hours), but after piercing 
the life remains, just as we find life slight in an ovule but 
enduring in a seed. 
