of Poronia punctata (Z,.). 247 
quite ripe they protrude above the surface in minute black 
pillar-like masses, enclosing numerous ascospores. A longi¬ 
tudinal section of a mature stroma shows the perithecia in 
various stages of development, embedded in the vegetative 
portion of the stroma-head. Immature perithecia appear 
as more or less spherical dark patches at different levels below 
the surface, mature perithecia as flask-shaped bodies, opening 
on the surface (Plate XV, Fig. 16), and bounded by a very 
definite wall. The asci are club-shaped, and enclose eight 
dark brown ascospores, ellipsoidal in form, and having a lateral 
slit-like pit in the outer wall (Fig. 33). They measure 
22 by 10 //. 
Among the asci are numerous colourless, long, slender, 
multicellular paraphyses. The conidia are small colourless 
pear-shaped bodies, with oil-like drops, and are formed by 
abstriction from the ends and sides of the terminal hyphae 
of a stroma. In some cases the stromata do not expand 
above into a disk-shaped head, but remain columnar in shape, 
in which case conidia only are formed, and there is no trace 
of perithecia (cf. Fig. 3). 
For the purposes of pure cultures of the Fungus, groups of 
ascospores were collected from ripe perithecia by inverting 
the head of a stroma upon a sterile coverglass, on which it 
deposited numerous spores overnight. These were washed 
into a tube of sterile water, and thence plate- and hanging-drop 
cultures were made, in a medium consisting of j o per cent, 
gelatine with a decoction of horse-dung. 
For similar cultures of conidia, abundant material could 
be obtained from any young stroma. In this medium both 
kjnds of spores germinated readily, at the ordinary tempera¬ 
tures of the laboratory (15°-20° C.). 
The Ascospores form a lateral germ-tube, growing out 
through the slit-like pit of the exosporium ; the germ-tubes 
are broad, with frequent septa, and the cells are filled with 
abundant vacuolated protoplasm. Lateral branches arise 
from points just below a septum, and, as a rule, alternately 
from left to right of the main hypha. Before definite 
