170 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
of several branches of peculiar and characteristic appearance (pi. 20, 
fig. 47-48). This primordium is easily distinguished from normal 
vegetative hyphae. Its elements are bent and twisted, irregularly 
gnarled and uneven in diameter, and are filled with denser, more 
granular protoplasm than are the neighboring cells. The branching 
increases (pi. 20, fig. 49) until there is formed a dense tangle of irregu¬ 
lar hyphae in which no details can be traced out. Other branches 
are given off from the lower parts of the original hypha, and these 
participate in the formation of the sporodochium. Frequently 
branches from neighboring hyphae become involved so that the fruc¬ 
tification may have a multiple origin. But in any case, the origin, 
whether simple or multiple, is finally obscured by the presence at the 
base of the sporodochium of a loose tangle of anastomosing hyphae 
(pi. 20, fig. 50), which may be merely the branches from the single 
original hypha, or may contain branches from neighboring hyphae. 
Frequently when the formation of sporodochia is rapid and copious, 
two or more primordia may be so closely situated as to become en¬ 
tangled, and the resulting fructification is a twin, or an irregular 
composite of several fused sporodochia. Hence it is seen that this 
conidial fructification may lack strict unity of origin, as Harper (’ 02 , 
p. 9) has pointed out in the case of basidiosporic fructifications. The 
sporodochium may be built up by the ramifications of a single hypha, 
or it may originate from several hyphae belonging to the same or to 
different mycelia. 
The elements of the young sporodochium are of irregular lengths 
and project unequally from the surface, but as the mature size is 
reached this unevenness is lost; the tips of the branching hyphae 
become approximately even, while the terminal cells enlarge and 
become closely placed side by side to form a cortical layer of conidia. 
Hence the external aspect of the young sporodochium is changed 
from that of a tangled weft of hyphae to that of a compact, nearly 
smooth, cellular body having a sclerotioid appearance (pi. 20, fig. 50). 
The spongy interior of the mature fructification (pi. 20, fig. 51) is 
composed of loosely radiating, copiously branched hyphae, whose 
cells are short, irregular, and sometimes bear clamp connections 
(pi. 20, fig. 54). Each hypha or conidiophore is terminated by a 
single spore, or rarely by a chain of two or more spores (pi. 20, fig. 
53-55). These spores are of a very simple nature, being merely the 
enlarged terminal cells; they show no specialization of wall or contents, 
