Masses —A Monograph of the Geoglosseae . 231 
two conjoined cells as at J. I have not seen basidia so arise, 
and it looks superficially like what is termed conjugation/ 
It may be argued that cystidia and metuloids, being 
hymenial appendages, are degraded basidia or asci, and thus 
their origin from conjugating filaments does not throw doubt 
as to the sexual nature of the process. To meet such a 
possibility, evidence of conjugation, illustrating all the details 
of the process as described by Dangeard, can be observed 
on a grand scale in the formation of the large hairs covering 
the exterior of the ascophore in species of Ascobolns , Lachnea , 
Humaria , & c. Now, in selecting protective hairs as evidence 
of the broadly distributed mode of formation of organs by 
conjugation, I think such cannot, by any amount of ingenuity, 
be considered as aborted spore-producing structures, but as 
purely vegetative parts of the ascophore. Figs. 93, 94, and 95 
illustrate the mode of origin of the hairs from the ascophore 
of Lachnea albo-spadicea , Phillips; using the terms employed 
by Dangeard, the parts of the figures indicated would 
stand as follows : — a, gametes ; b, oospore (not complete in 
Fig. 93, as the two nuclei have not yet fused) ; c, the hair, 
which is a direct outgrowth of the oospore. Probably any 
species of Lachnea or pilose Ascobolns would give the same 
results, as the gigantic spinulose, thick-walled hairs borne by 
these species have the base furcate. The reader is referred 
to the numerous figures of hairs from the Discomycetes given 
in Cook’s Mycographia, showing the furcate base. Finally j 
the fungus called Ciliaria bicuspis, by Boudier is so named 
on account of the bicuspid or forked base of the large hairs 
present on the margin and outside of the ascophore. 
The above observations show that the coalescence of the 
apical cells of two distinct hyphae does not prove, in all cases, 
that these hyphae are gametes, in the usual sense in which 
that term is employed. Secondly, that the coalescence of 
two cells, the mixing of their protoplasm, and the fusion 
of their nuclei, does not necessarily constitute an oospore ; 
1 Bull. Soc. Myc. France, XII, n, PI. Ill, f. i, 1896. 
