392 
Notes on Recent Literature. 
been shewn by Buller to be discharged from mushrooms and allied 
fungi by the employment of a concentrated beam of light below 
the sporophores at the time of maturity. 
Some interesting observations are recorded which deal with 
the power possessed by genera such as Schizophyllum, Polystictus, 
etc., of withstanding dessication without injury. When the dry 
fructifications of Schizophyllum commune are damped, spore 
discharge is almost immediately resumed. 
The author brings forward evidence which shows that the 
basidiospores of Hymenomycetes are shot violently from their 
sterigmata, though the mechanism of this process is still obscure. 
A large amount of work has been done on the physics of spore- 
fall and this botanist has applied for the first time a direct test of 
the applicability of Stokes’ Law to the fall of microscopic spheres 
in air. 
Another interesting feature of the book is the new light 
thrown by the writer upon the Coprinus type of fruit body, in 
which, as is well known, the gills deliquesce at maturity. It has 
often been supposed that the spores fall into the liquid thus 
produced and that insects seek this liquid and so effect the dis¬ 
semination of spores. Buller puts forward the view that the 
process of deliquescence is one of auto-digestion which enables 
successive parts of the gills to liberate their spores effectively, 
because it is found that in the Coprinus type of fruit body all the 
basidia over a small area of a gill are mature at the same time. It 
certainly seems that the author has put forward a more adequate 
explanation of this phenomenon of deliquesence than has previously 
been given. 
The observations on spore discharge in Ascomycetes are less 
detailed than those previously discussed, and few new results are 
recorded. 
A useful summary of the successive chapters is given at the 
end of the book. The figures and photographs are clear and the 
letterpress is excellent. F.T.B. 
“The Genera of Fungi,” by F. E. Clements, Ph.D., Professor 
of Botany in the University of Minnesota. Minneapolis, 1909. 
The aim of this book is to provide a key for the identification 
of the genera of Fungi. The author, who is well known as an 
ecologist, states in the preface that the book is an outgrowth of a 
translation of the keys in the early volumes of Saccardo’s “ Sylloge 
Fungorum ” for the use of students of mycology. A suitable book 
of this type would be of considerable utility to those commencing 
the study of Fungi, but the author of the volume under con¬ 
sideration has such extraordinary ideas in regard to the classifi¬ 
cation of the Fungi that the use of the book cannot be recom¬ 
mended. One recognises, of course, that “ keys,” in themselves do 
not necessarily indicate natural relationships, but there seems to be 
no justification for the inclusion of the Bacteria in the Phycomy- 
cetes and of the Uredineae in the Ascomycetes! Concerning the 
latter, Professor Clements considers a sorus of teleutospores to be 
an apothecium, the teleutospores corresponding to asci with fixed 
spore cells. What is there to be said for such a view as this ? 
F.T.B. 
K. Madley, Steam Printer, 151, Whitfield Street, London, W. 
