Biology of Fegatella conic a. 97 
other two lots. The thallus was larger and of a deeper green colour, and 
in every case examined there was a well-marked mycorhizal zone. 
Similar series of cultures were made with very young adventitious 
plants, removed from old plants that had been found to be free from fungus, 
and also with the bulbils to be described presently. The results obtained 
agreed exactly with those just described for the spores. In the case of 
the bulbils, however, it may be mentioned that these structures themselves 
were frequently found to contain fungal hyphae at the outset. 
Asexual Reproduction. 
By the dying away of the older parts of the thallus, the branches 
become separated from each other and then grow out into independent 
plants. Besides this simple means of propagation, the observations of 
Schostakowitsch (1894), which have been confirmed by the present writer, 
show that the thallus of Fegatella possesses in a marked manner the power 
of regeneration. A plant is cut up into small pieces, which are cultivated 
on damp soil. After four or five days, given sufficient warmth, several 
shoots are seen to grow out from the lower surface of each piece of 
thallus, along the cut edge which in the intact plant was nearest to the 
apical growing-point. Each of these adventitious shoots arises through 
the active growth and division of a single superficial cell, forming at first 
a cylindrical body which grows out and after a time begins to become 
differentiated in the usual manner. When the cultures were made in dark- 
ness, new shoots were formed quite as freely as in the light, but they were 
long and narrow and did not grow into normal plants with typical air- 
chambers and scales ; on being brought into the light, they gave rise 
to normal plants, otherwise they remained abortive after attaining a length 
of 2 to 3 cm. 
According to the present writer’s observations, the property of re- 
generation is much more restricted in Fegatella than was found by Vochting 
(1885) to be the case in Marchantia and L unularia. In all cases, the 
young plants were found to arise from the compact tissue underlying the 
air-chambers, and attempts to induce the formation of new shoots from the 
sexual receptacles and from the sporogonia gave negative results. 
As already stated, the older plants become covered up by the new 
shoots, so as to form a kind of turf consisting of several superposed layers 
of plants. Along the ventral surface of these old plants, which have 
become for the most part brown and withered, there are frequently found 
numbers of small spherical or ovoid outgrowths, the bulbils or tubers, 
which appear to have been first described by Karsten (1887). In these 
tuber-forming plants, the cells of the compact tissue immediately within 
the ventral superficial layer of the midrib grow and divide actively, giving 
rise to a mass of tissue which later breaks through the superficial layer 
H 
