Dale . — Observations on Gymnoascaceae . 589 
interesting, as the authors point out, because it is the first der- 
matophyte which has produced asci under artificial culture. 
The life-history of Gymnoascus Reessii shows affinities in 
other directions, some of which have already been pointed out 
by previous investigators. Attention has been drawn to the 
fact that, though the young coils in this species always consist 
of two cells which are at first identical, certain variations may 
occur later which seem to indicate affinities with other genera 
and species. For example, when the two cells are of the same 
size and shape at the time of conjugation, they exactly resemble 
the similar stage which Eidam has described and figured in 
Eremascns albus 1 2 (cp. Figs. 9-1 1 with Eidam’s figures on his 
PI. XIX). 
Eremascns was originally placed by Eidam amongst the 
Gymnoascaceae, and was by him regarded as forming a link 
between the Mucorineae and the Ascomycetes. 
In connexion with the possibility of a connexion between 
the Gymnoascaceae and Zygomycetaceae it is interesting to 
remember that the sexual reproductive organs described and 
figured by Eidam in Basidiobolns ranarum 2 originate exactly 
in the same way as in Gymnoascus Reessii , namely, by the out- 
growth of two adjacent cells, close to the septum which divides 
them from one another, and that these two cells fuse together 
as in Eremascns and Gymnoascus . 
Schroter, in Engler and Prantl 3 , however, places Eremascns 
amongst the Endomycetaceae, which, together with the Sac- 
charomycetaceae, form the group of the Protoascineae. 
If, on the other hand, the sterile cell in Gymnoascus Reessii 
grows more rapidly than the ascogone, the latter grows round 
the former in a manner suggesting G. candidus , Ctenomyces , 
and Eidamella. 
Such a variation which, as it were, unites the type of G. Reessii 
and that of G. candidus also very closely agrees with the descrip- 
1 loc. cit. (3). 
2 (4) Basidiobolns : eine neue Gattung der Entomophthoraceen. Cohn’s Beitrage, 
Band iv, Heft ii, p. 181 and Taf. xi (1887). 
3 loc. cit., p. 132. 
