ON THE PILOBOLHLE. 
255 
the day advances the fungus completes its growth, and about 
noon is ready to throw off its sporange. In the afternoon, 
when the next crop is beginning to appear, nothing is left of 
the previous one except the withered and dying stems.. 
While contemplating the saucer in which I grew my 
specimens, after listening to the mimic bombardment which 
raged so furiously an hour before, standing as it were on the 
held of battle with nothing but dead and dying soldiers 
stretched around me, I have felt as Wellington might have 
felt after Waterloo, but with a consolation denied to that 
gallant hero. I knew that even then around my feet another 
army was growing up among the mangled remains without 
any help from me, and would be ready the next day with full 
equipment to march with me to victory again. 
The normal course of development, however, may easily 
be disturbed by a change of circumstances. If there be 
sufficient moisture and nutriment present the growth pro¬ 
ceeds with regularity, but, if we remove the specimens into 
a drier atmosphere, we may retard it to a considerable extent. 
You will see that it is difficult to make sure of specimens to 
exhibit at an evening meeting, unless you remove them in the 
morning into a place where their growth will be stopped, and 
the simplest way is to take them from beneath the bell-glass 
and place them in the dark. If we grow the Pilobolus 
altogether in a dark room it soon loses count of the time, 
and immature or full-grown sporangia may be found at all 
hours. 
n . —Modes of Multiplication. 
If the sporangium falls into a suitable place the gelatinous 
substance is gradually dissolved by water, and the spores 
escape and germinate. But it is not by this means that the 
successive crops of Pilobolus are produced, but by a kind of 
prolification of the mycelium, which continually sends out 
fresh branches, from which new stems proceed. In fact, the 
whole of the membranes appear to possess this reparative 
power. If the first growth from a basal reservoir be injured 
it sends out a new stem from some other point ; if the top of 
a growing stem be injured it forms a septum just below the 
injured part; a new stem grows out from the side of the old 
one (Fig. 5) and may mature its sporangium. Van Tieghem 
has shewn that, if even the spores of P. ceclipus be injured or 
broken in pieces, each fragment will germinate by itself, and 
produce a mycelium.* 
* Troisi^me Meinoire, pi. 10, fig. 1. See also Nouvelles Recherches 
sur les Mucorinees, pp. 19-24. 
