ON THE PILOBOLIDJE. 
219 
forehead; the blow was accompanied by a sensation as if a 
tiny drop of water had fallen there. On looking in a glass I 
conic! see the little black sporange adhering where it struck, and 
it remained there for several hours. I immediately took the 
patch of P. Kleinii from which it came (and I should mention 
that the stems of these specimens were bent almost at a right 
angle under the influence of the one-sided light beneath 
which they had grown) into an empty room, where I placed 
it with the upper portions of the bent stems pointing towards 
the window. I then laid a number of sheets of white paper 
around it, and in the same horizontal plane ; carefully closed 
the door and left it for an hour. This was just about midday. 
On returning I found all the sheets covered with a multitude 
of black dots, which a lens revealed as the sporangia; each 
sporangium was surrounded by a brownish stain, produced 
by the liquid ejected at the same time. On measuring the 
distances to which the sporangia were thrown I found that a 
majority lay between three and four feet, but nearly a score 
lay at a greater distance than four feet, and the farthest I 
could find at a distance of 4ft. lOin. When we consider that 
the utmost height of the individual fungi from which these 
bomb-sliells proceeded did not exceed one-tentli of an inch, 
and that therefore the last-mentioned sporangium was thrown 
to a distance of nearly 600 times the height of the plant 
which threw it, we can form some idea of the enormous force 
exerted in this instance. It is as if a man of average height 
were able to throw his own head to a distance of nearly two- 
thirds of a mile. 
We may mention a few other instances known amongst 
Fungi of a projectile force, without referring to those which 
exist in Phanerogams. Chordostylum and Caulogaster, which 
are by Corda erroneously classed with the Pilobolidse, project 
their sporangia, and so do Spliserobolus and Tlielebolus. The 
spores of Empusa are elastically projected from their basidia, 
when mature, and accompanied by a little of the proto¬ 
plasmic contents, as in Pilobolus. According to Zalewski 
the spores of various species of (Ecidium are thrown verti¬ 
cally from their cups to a height amounting in favourable 
cases to 10-20 mm.* The spores also of many Discomycetes, 
Ascobolus, Peziza, Morcliella, Vibrissea, etc., are violently 
discharged into the air by the rupture of the containing asci. 
A curious circumstance, which has often been noted with 
wonder, is that the projected sporangia are nearly always 
found to be attached to the object upon which they alight by 
* Inaugural Dissertation delivered before the Kaiser-Wilhelms 
Universitiit, at Strasburg, 1883. 
