The Origin and Development of the Apothecium etc. 
423 
In view of what has been described of the relation of spermatia and 
trichogynes by Stahl, Borzi, Sturgis, Lindau, Baur and Darbishire, 
it would seem as if the sexual nature of spermatia and trichogynes could 
not be doubted, and yet some recent publications indicate that, at least 
in the minds of some writers, the sexual nature of these Organs is not an 
established fact. Glück (43), not convinced of the sexual nature of the 
trichogyne and spermatia by the careful researches of Stahl (74) and 
Borzi (13), and much impressed by Möller’s results, suggests that we 
have in the fusion of trichogyne and spermatium merely a fusion of a 
vegetative hypha with spores such as (he says) occurs very commonly. 
However, such a fusion does not seem to be something which occurs so 
very commonly. But even if it did, the behavior of the trichogyne in 
Collema pulposum and the nature and position of the spermatia conclusively 
negative Glück’s Suggestion. Glück would certainly not consider the 
male cells as I have described them, to be asexual spores. Brooks (15) 
says that the diminution of protoplasmic contents in a spermatium attacli- 
ed to a trichogyne, as observed by Frank (34), is not necessarily the 
result of the passage of the spermatium nucleus iuto the trichogyne, but 
that it may be just as readily explained as the process of disorganization 
which the contents of the spermatia would naturally undergo if these 
cells remained for any length of time on the exposed trichogyne. How- 
ever, even though the spermatium content were to become disorganized 
as a result of drying, it could still be seen. Certainly the disappearance 
of the nucleus of the male cells in Collema pulposum cannot be explained 
as the result of a disorganization due to drying. Brefeld has always 
maintained the absence of functional sexual organs in the higher fungi. 
In one of his more recent volumes (14) he questions whether there is 
even the shadow of an analogy between the trichogynes of lichens and 
those of the red algae, and as to the spermatia he holds that they were 
long since sliown to be nothing more than conidia. The spermatia of 
Collema pulposum are certainly entirely homologous with those borne 
in the spermogonia of other Collemas, and it is impossible to conceive 
after what I have described of their behavior in tliis species that they 
are merely conidia. To Blackman (9) a Suggestion of Metzger’s as to 
the nature of liehen spermatia seems to be the most satisfactory. Metz- 
ger (as quoted by Blackmann) sees in the spermatia of lichens “male 
cells which have retained a certain power of vegetative development, 
and, now that in many cases the ascus fruit develops without their aid, 
they sometimes act as conidia and may have become modified in that 
direction”. However, I do not regard it as proved that the ascus fruit 
