in
the same degree as the conidia-bearers grow, and at last the black
rind remains behind empty and shrivelled. If we bring, after many
months, for the first time, the ripe sclerotium, in damp ground, in
summer or autumn, after it has ripened, the further development takes
place more slowly, and in an essentially different form. It is true
that from the inner tissue numerous filamentous branches shoot forth
at the cost of this growing fascicle, and break through the black
rind, but its filaments remain strongly bound, in an almost parallel
situation, to a cylindrical cord, which for a time lengthens itself
and spreads out its free end to a flat plate-like disc. This is always
formed of strongly united threads, ramifications of the cylindrical
cord. On the free upper surface of the disc, the filaments shoot forth
innumerable branches, which, growing to the same height, thick and
parallel with one another, cover the before-named disc. Some remain
narrow and cylindrical, are very numerous, and produce fine hairs
(paraphyses); others, also very numerous, take the form of club-like
ampulla cells, and each one forms in its interior eight free swimming
oval spores. Those ampulla cells are sporidiiferous asci. After the
spores have become ripe, the free point of the utricle bursts, and the
spores are scattered to a great distance by a mechanism which we will
not here further describe. New ampullas push themselves between those
which are ripening and withering; a disc can, under favourable
circumstances, always form new asci for weeks at a time. The number of
the already described utricle-bearers is different, according to the
size of the sclerotium; smaller specimens usually produce only one,
larger two to four. The size is regulated by that of the sclerotia,
and ranges, in full-grown specimens, between one and more millimetres
for the length of the stalk, and a half to three (seldom more)
millimetres for the breadth of the disc.[q] For some time the conidia
form, belonging to the Mucedines, has been known as _Botrytis cinerea_
(or _Polyactis cinerea_). The compact mycelium, or sclerotium, as an
imperfect fungus, bore the name of _Sclerotium echinatum_, whilst to
the perfect and cup-like form has been given the name of _Peziza
Fuckeliana_. We have reproduced De Bary's life-history of this mould
here, as an illustration of structure in the _Mucedines_, but
hereafter we shall have to write of similar transformations when
treating