38 
Cooke and Mds-see . — On a New 
tinuous, filiform, colourless gonidia, measuring from 25-30 
X i ’5 fi (Fig* 6). These gonidia under a magnifying power 
of 400 diameters present an appearance which might be 
mistaken for septation, but when more highly magnified is 
seen to be due to the presence of a single row of vacuoles 
(Fig. 7). There appears to be a considerable interval of 
time between the full development of the gonidia and the 
ascigerous condition which follows. The specimens collected 
by Balansa 1 , from which the genus was established by 
Spegazzini 2 , illustrate the ascigerous condition ; hence the 
generic character is imperfect, inasmuch as the Ephelis stage 
is not mentioned. In the specimens sent from Trinidad by 
Mr. Hart, the two conditions are present. The secondary 
ascigerous stroma not unfrequently originates immediately 
below an old empty gonidial cavity, through which it bursts, 
and remains until the spores are mature as a sessile, spherico- 
depressed swelling, surrounded by the raised margin of the 
Ephelis (Fig. 9). When the ascigerous structure does not 
occupy an old gonidial cavity the earliest external indication 
of its existence is a swelling of the primary stroma, the cortex 
being eventually ruptured by the growth of the ascigerous 
stroma, round which it forms a raised pilose border exactly 
as in the gonidial condition. In some spikes nearly every 
ascigerous stroma occupies a gonidial cavity, whereas in others 
there is no evidence of the Ephelis stage having existed, the 
ascigerous condition bursting directly through the cortex of 
the primary stroma ; in others, again, both modes of origin 
of the ascigerous stage are present. 
The ascophore originates at some distance below the primary 
cortex as a spherical weft of intricately interlaced hyphae 
(Fig. 15), that appear to become directly differentiated on the 
side towards the cortex into the spherico-depressed head of 
the ascophore, which is umbilicate below, and furnished with 
a very short stem-like base, sunk in the umbilicus. The 
1 B. Balansa, PL du Paraguay, n. 253. 
2 Speg., Fung. Guaranit., Pug. I, n. 253; also in Sacc., Syll. Fung. Additamenta 
to Vols. I-IV, n. 7249. 
