Lutman—Life History and Cytology of the Smuts . 1191 
SOME CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LIFE HISTORY AND 
CYTOLOGY OF THE SMUTS. 
B. F. LUTMAN. 
Our knowledge of the smuts, in spite of their economic and 
theoretical importance and the immense amount of work that 
has been done on them, is deficient at many very critical points 
in their life history. There is much evidence to show as Bro- 
feld (6) has especially argued that they form the lowest group 
of those fungi that have a basidium. The nuclear phenomena 
in the two higher groups, the Uredineae and the Basidiomy- 
cetes, have received a great deal of attention recently both as to 
the cells of the mycelium and as to the nuclear behavior in spore 
formation and germination while little has been done on the 
Ustilagineae. 
The later investigations of the rusts and Basidiomycetes have 
lead to the general conclusion that they have typically, binucle- 
ated cells during a large part of their life-histories and that this 
binucleated condition is terminated in the teleutospore or basid¬ 
ium by the fusion of the two nuclei. Neither the origin of the 
binucleated condition of the cells nor the length of the uninucle- 
ated phase is the same in the Uredineae and Basidiomycetes. 
In the Ustilagineae Dangeard’s descriptions of spore forma¬ 
tion (12) show that in its early stages the spore is binucleated 
but later becomes uninucleated by the fusion of the two nuclei. 
This observation of the binucleated condition of the young spore 
is of the utmost importance and must be confirmed on as many 
forms as possible. Uo successful attempt has been made to go 
back of the spore to find the number of nuclei in the mycelial 
cells. All that we have in the literature concerning the num- 
