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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Dr. Max Reess has recently published an account of Co- 
prinus stercorarius (which is a rare species and not British'' 
in Pringsheim’s “ Jahrbucher,” in which he has described 
and figured a sort of Carpogonium (or Ascogonium), a female 
organ said to he produced at the ends of mycelial threads. 
This organ, according to Dr. Reess’ figures, would appear to 
be furnished, or not furnished, or doubly furnished at the apex 
with a trichogyne, an organ into which the spermatozoids 
discharge their contents. This trichogyne, according to Sachs 
in describing the Algae, is “ a long thin hair-like hyaline sac, 
which serves as a receptive organ, and springs from a structure 
which is called the trichophore. This latter is a body usually 
consisting of several cells, in or near which the results of the 
fertilisation become apparent, cell-filaments or masses of tissue 
shooting out near or beneath it, forming the receptacle, here 
termed the cystocarp, in which the spores are subsequently 
formed. In one genus (of Algae), Dudresnaya , the process is 
still more complicated, inasmuch as the tubes first spring from 
the trichophore, which occasion the formation of the cysto- 
carps only after conjugation with the terminal cells of other 
branches.” The Carpogonia, as figured by Dr. Reess, remind 
me of a number of spores agglutinated together with sperma- 
tozoids still attached, exactly as similar agglutinated companies 
of spores may be always washed from the dry brown spots on 
Agaricus lacrymcibundus or the various brown-spotted Tricho- 
lomata. I am disposed to fall in more or less with Dr. Reess’ 
views, although I do not know the species he has worked upon. 
The single primordial cell which I have seen expelled from the 
spore of A . lacrymcibundus and then pierced by spermatozoids 
before going into a resting state must be of the nature of a 
Carpogonium. The spores commonly put on an appearance 
similar to that figured by Dr. Reess, but anything referable to 
a tricogyne I have not seen. 
Dr. Eidam has also recently published an illustrated paper on 
the reproductive process in the Agaricini in the 66 Botanische 
Zeitung” for the 1st and 8th Oct. last. Unfortunately, Dr. 
Eidam’s paper has reference to Agaricus coprophilus (Bull), a 
rare Agaric in this country, and one almost unknown to me. 
Here, at fig. 12, PI. VIII., a Carpogonium is again suggested, but 
Dr. Eidam very properly and reasonably attaches a note of in- 
terrogation to his interpretation of the figure. At the ends of 
certain threads Dr. Eidam figures what he terms spermatia, 
which, though somewhat different in shape, are identical in size 
with the bodies I term spermatozoids. My spermatozoids are 
at first globular, fig. 2 A, then somewhat elongated from the 
unfolding of one turn of a spiral b ; and these bodies, with me, 
although often produced direct from the cystidium itself, are 
quite as often produced at the end of a long thread given out 
