25 
4. A spore-ball from a chestnut-agar culture, seen in optical 
section, with a single layer of envelope cells. 
5. Ihe “scolecite” stage from a spore-ball germinated in 
beer-wort gelatine. 
6. Portion of a longitudinal section of an unripe perithecium, 
showing the young asci pushing through the dis- 
integrated pseudo-parenchyma. 
(a) An unripe ascus, and (b) an ascospore germinating in 
water after twenty-four hours. ; 
Ti 
NOTES ON A SPECIES OF STILBUM. 
By Annie Lorrain Smith. 
Stilbum tomentosum is a small white fungus with a fairly 
stout stalk, composed of hyphex, which bear at the tips chains 
of spores, the whole forming a compact globose head. It 
grows on TLvichia and some other Mycetozoa. The first 
account of the species is given with a rather indistinct figure in 
Schrader's Journal fiir der Botanih Il, p. 65, published in 
1799. The author so named it on account of a byssoid white 
tomentum from which the stalk emerged. He suggests that 
the plants figured by Bulliard, of Mucor villosus, Pl. 504, fig. 
15, may be a young stage of the same fungus. 
The next «mention is by Persoon in 1801, in his § yno psis 
Methodica Fungorum, p. 680. He describes it as parasitic and 
with a tomentose stalk, but suggests that the byssoid tomentum 
may have developed in the process of drying. He thinks the 
name “ parasiticum” would have been more adapted to the 
habit of the plant. 
Persoon’s suggestion is adopted by Ditmar, who figures and re- 
describes the fungus in Sturm’s Deutschland’s Flora, Heft. =, 
Pp. 93, tab. 46. He calls it S. parasiticum, Pers. and says the 
stalk is glabrous but of a vesicular, floccose texture. He thinks 
that the felted mycelium noted by Schrader is some other white 
mould. He gives a characteristic figure of the plant, with the 
tiny globose spores. 
In 1827 it was included by Greville in the British Flora. He 
records the finding of it by Berkeley in Glenfinlas, He goes 
