106 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
Port du Salut. There is then good reason to believe that this 
fungus is associated with nearly every type of highly flavored 
ripened soft cheese met in the American market. 
THE MOLDS REFERRED TO IN THIS PAPER. 
The Camembert and Roquefort molds belong to the hypho- 
mycete genus Penicillium, which has been characterized by 
one author, ‘‘ hyphae broadly effused, creeping; conidiophore 
branched at the apex in an irregularly verticillate manner, pro- 
ducing brush or broom-like forms; conidia in chains, hyaline 
or bright colored, spherical or elliptical.”’ 
This genus of fungi contains a large number of very poorly 
described forms which are everywhere abundant as the “‘green’”’ 
xr ‘blue’? mold of the household, the dairy and the granary. 
They form patches upon and just under the surface of the 
materials upon which they grow. The patches are composed 
of delicate threads of mold which are matted together, forming 
more or less cottony surfaces, never rising more than a small 
fraction of an inch above the substratum. At first these areas 
are always white, but in most species the ripening of a crop of 
spores is indicated by the change to a color which is usually 
some shade of green, though this may later give place to a 
brown. In a few species other colors appear. These spores 
(conidia) or propagating bodies are minute, thin-walled cells 
averaging possibly one five-thousandth of an inch in diameter, 
and so light that they float freely in the air. A breath upon 
the surface of such a colony carries away thousands of them, 
when if held in a proper position, they may commonly be seen 
to rise in a cloud. If the colony be held to the nose and 
inhaled they give the sensation commonly called the “smell 
of mold.’”’ ‘They are then exceedingly light; they are pro- 
duced in immense numbers; they are capable of growing in 
almost every conceivable situation, upon anything which is not 
definitely and strongly poisonous. Some of these spores are 
short-lived, others cling tenaciously to their power to germinate. 
Of the species probably a dozen common ones may be expected 
in any localjty, perhaps more. Our studies have shown that 
they affect very differently the substances upon which they 
grow. It is then clearly necessary that we know the forms 
we are to use by thorough study of their characters and habits, 

