388 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts , and Letters. 
covery which may finally lead to a solution of this interesting 
problem. 
Material for this paper has been collected at various places 1 
during the past ten years and fixed, in the field, in a number of 
fixing solutions. The best results have been obtained from the 
material killed in Flemming’s weak and Flemming’s medium 
solution. Merkel’s solution has also given very satisfactory re¬ 
sults. Various combinations of stains have been used, but the 
most excellent results have been obtained by the use of the triple 
stain of Flemming and by the use of Heidenhain’s iron alum- 
haematoxylin, the latter giving the best results when studying 
the spindle figures. Spores were caught on sterile slides and 
some of these were immediately fixed in Flemming’s weak fixa¬ 
tive and then stippled on slides having a thin layer of egg-albu¬ 
men fixative. These were allowed to dry and then washed, de¬ 
hydrated, bleached, and stained in the usual manner. 
Some spores were put into tapwater or wood decoction and 
fixed from time to time in an effort to get various stages in ger¬ 
mination, while other spores were plated out in Petri-dish and 
test-tube cultures in order to secure hyphae in various stages of 
development. No culture medium has, however, been found 
which will give a continued growth of the mycelium of any of 
the species of Dacrymyces studied. 
The earlier studies on the cytology of the higher basidiomycetes 
have been so thoroughly reviewed by Fries (13, 14), Levine (26, 
27), Fitzpatrick (12), and more recently in a most exceptional 
thesis by Bensaude (4), that no effort will be made in this brief 
paper to refer to any other than more recent studies. 2 
Studies of Nuclear Phenomena 
Spores 
The spores of Dacrymyces when thrown from the sterigmata 
are one-celled and contain a single nucleus (PL XXIX, fig. 1). 
This is the condition typically found in the higher Basidiomy- 
1 Most of the collections have been made in the vicinity of Madison; others 
have been made at Superior, Brule, Blue Mounds, and Lake Mills, Wisconsin. 
During the spring of 1915 many collections were made in the White Mountains 
and in the vicinity of Cambridge, Mass. 
2 A fuller discussion of the literature will be found in two papers which are in 
preparation, one on the cytology of Auricularia, and the other on the cytology of 
Tremella and Exidia species. 
