The Origin and Development of the Apotkecium etc. 
417 
conceivable tliat a still greater reduction in number raay be found in 
other forms. Then, too, the spermatia may conceivably be borne nearer 
the ascogones so tliat a long trichogyne would be unnecessary. The 
spermatia I have found stain very lightly and are found most easily by 
tracing the long trichogynes which grow toward them. If they were 
embedded in a dense plectenchymous tissue, such small cells as I have 
described the spermatia of Collema to be, would be exceedingly difficult 
to find. I have observed that the basal cells of the trichogyne with their 
brown staining cross walls make this organ conspicuous, but in a dense 
tissue like that of Peltigera, in which the trichogyne would be difficult 
to trace if its cells were reduced in number, or if perkaps a slender uni- 
cellular trichogyne terminated the ascogone, one might easily think 
that the ascogone terminates in a vegetative hypha. In these lichens 
in which spermogonia are rarely found it may be that variations are occur- 
ring which tend toward the non-production of superficial spermogonia 
and toward the production of fewer spermatia embedded within the 
tkallus. Glück (43) figures the spermatia of Peltigera as considerably 
larger than those of many other lichens; but even if the spermatia were 
relatively large, single cells might not be easy to locate in a dense hyplial 
tissue. At least it would seem well worth while to make further investi- 
gation of those lichens which seldom produce spermogonia, or in which 
spermogonia are rudimentary or lacking, since there is a possibility that 
the spermatia are produced elsewhere than in such superficial organs. 
Fünfstück’s paper was pubhshed in 1884. Modern technique with 
serial sections and much patient, persistent study might remove some 
of these lichens which he studied from the list of apogamous ascomy- 
cetes. 
It seems entirely possible that Solorina saccata may be apogamous 
and yet it is obviously unsafe to conclude that a liehen apothecium (or 
for that matter any other fruit body which in many cases is the result 
of a sexual fusion) develops apogamously simply because no spermogonia 
are found. Solorina saccata bears no spermogonia. In the earliest stages 
of apothecial development found by Baur (5), the Anlage consists of a 
group of tkick-celled hyphae with dense contents surrounded by a rather 
thic-k weft of hyphae. Baur reports that these ascogone cells bear little 
resemblance to those of other lichens and that they are to be distinguish- 
ed from vegetative hyphae only by their larger size, their thin walls and 
their denser content. Especially interesting is the number cf nuclei in 
their cells. The vegetative cells contain two to four nuclei, the ascogone 
cells often two, but usually only one. There may then be one or two 
Archiv f. Zellforschung. X. 28 
