368 Biffen. — A Fat-Destroying Fungus. 
distinguished in the stroma itself, and later they are formed 
in great abundance on its surface, where they stand out in 
warty brown masses two or more mms. high. They have 
been produced continually for the last nine months. Un- 
fortunately they have proved barren in every case. They 
consist merely of a flask-shaped shell of thickened dark-brown 
hyphae, woven into a very close layer, enclosing a plexus of 
colourless hyphae often of considerable size (Fig. 8). Keep- 
ing the cultures at a temperature of so 0 C. and 25 0 C. for 
a month, and altering the hygrometric conditions by partially 
drying with calcium chloride, has had no effect, and after 
making many attempts to force them to produce ascospores 
I have had to abandon the problem. Owing, to this the 
further identification of the Fungus has to be postponed. 
Yet another form of reproduction was met with, but once 
only, namely, a pycnidium with pycnidiospores. This occurred 
in a stroma on a culture four weeks old. The pycnidiurrf was 
flask-shaped, with a narrow ostiole. Its walls were com- 
posed of smaller, less thickened hyphae, which were not so 
closely woven as those of the walls of the perithecia. The 
spore-abstricting hyphae were branched and directed to the 
ostiole. Under these circumstances the germination of the 
pycnidiospores could not be observed. 
As the perithecia or ascocarps are open at the apex, the 
Fungus evidently belongs to the Pyrenomycetes, which may 
be subdivided into three groups, the Hypocreaceae, the 
Sphaeriaceae, and the Dothideaceae, the texture of the 
stroma and the position of the perithecia serving as distin- 
guishing characteristics. The perithecia of the Sphaeriaceae 
are, as a rule, embedded in the stroma, and have hard, dark- 
coloured walls, while those of the Dothideaceae are so em- 
bedded that they have no distinct wall of their own. The 
Hypocreaceae, on the other hand, have soft, coloured perithecia, 
usually placed in groups on a fleshy stroma l . We may 
class the Fungus in question then among the Hypocreaceae, 
a group which contains several parasitic genera, some species 
1 Brefeld, Unters. aus d. Gesammtgeb. d. Mykol., Ileft x, p. 162. 
