4 
the earlier mycologists from at once striking into the broader way for the 
investigation of parasites , the method of cultivation in artificial nutrient 
solutions instead of in mere water. 
As great as the fundamental difference in ways of thinking and meth¬ 
ods which separates the earlier and the present investigations, so great 
is the difference in the results obtained, as I shall now show more ex¬ 
plicitly in further experiments with the smut fungi. 
Even in my first address on smut fungi and smut diseases, in 1884,1 
communicated important and unexpected results which I had then 
reached in cultivating different smut spores in artificial nutrient solu¬ 
tions.* While in mere water the smut spores either did not germinate, 
e. g the spores of corn smut, or germinated only scantily and con¬ 
cluded their development with the formation of a short germ tube 
(promycelium) and a few germ cells (conidia or sporidia); the same 
spores germinated in nutrient solutions without exception, the germ 
tubes produced conidia in inexhaustible abundance,! which only grew 
out into germ tubes when the nutrient solution was exhausted. The 
conidia were of definite shape and size, therefore specific for the indi¬ 
vidual forms of the smut fungi. In a number of forms they were pro¬ 
duced under liquid , e. g ,, in TJstilago carbo , U. cruenta , U. maydis , 
which are known as oat, millet, and corn smut$ in other forms they were 
produced above the liquid in the air , e. g ., in the stone smut of wheat, 
Tilletia caries. In this fungus and the forms related to it there grew 
further in nutrient solutions, out of the conidia derived from spore germi¬ 
nation, large, richly branched mycelia, which again produced the same 
conidia in unlimited abundance as short lateral shoots; there arose , in 
fact , mold-like turfs , which were again produced out of the new-formed 
and again new-sowed conidia, always in the same manner and abund¬ 
ance, so long as the culture was maintained in the nutrient solution. 
In oat, millet, and corn smut, and forms closely related to these, the fur¬ 
ther development of the conidia produced by spore germination under 
the nutrient solution continues not mold-like, but quite otherwise. The 
conidia of definite size and shape produced on the short germ tubes of the 
smut spores multiplied in just this size and shape by direct sprouting at 
definite places , and that always at both ends , in a rapid manner , ivithout 
limit. 
Eurthermore, the sprout-colonies of conidia which were so produced, 
* Additional cultures with parasites selected at random resulted in showing that in 
almost all cases maintenance outside of the host plant is easy to accomplish; even the 
lichen forming Ascomycetes, which live on and with different algm, representing the so- 
called lichens oi nature, could he easily cultivated (i without alga) in my nutrient 
solutions with the help of my culture methods, as final valid proof that lichens are 
nothing but a number of Ascomy cedes which live parasitically on different alga). Vide 
Moller, Knltin Jlechteubildendcv AeconiyceicH ohne Alyen. Arbeiten aus dem botanischen 
Institute in Munster i. W., 1887. 
11 or those )\ ho only read my address and have not seen the accompanying illustra¬ 
tions on the wall charts, I refer to the tables ip my book Brandpilze 
