microscope, it can be determined that they adhere to a single
filament of the mycelium by the base of the scolecite which remains
naked.

Although Tulasne could not satisfy himself of the presence of any act
of copulation in _Ascobolus furfuraceus_, or _Peziza melanoloma_, he
was more successful with _Peziza omphalodes_. As early as 1860 he
recognized the large globose, sessile, and grouped vesicles which
originate the fertile tissue, but did not comprehend the part which
these macrocysts were to perform. Each of these emits from its summit
a cylindrical tube, generally flexuous, but always more or less bent
in a crozier shape, sometimes attenuated at the extremity. Thus
provided, these utricles resemble so many tun-shaped, narrow-necked
retorts, filled with a granular thick roseate protoplasm. In the
middle of these, and from the same filaments, are generated elongated
clavate cells, with paler contents, more vacuoles, which Tulasne names
_paracysts_. These, though produced after the _macrocysts_, finally
exceed them in height, and seem to carry their summit so as to meet
the crozier-like prolongations. It would be difficult to determine to
which of these two orders of cells belongs the initiative of
conjugation. Sometimes the advance seems to be on one side, and
sometimes on the other. However this may be, the meeting of the
extremity of the connecting tube with the summit of the neighbouring
paracyst is a constant fact, observed over and over again a hundred
times. There is no real junction between the dissimilar cells above
described, except at the very limited point where they meet, and there
a circular perforation may be discerned at the end, defined by a round
swelling, which is either barely visible or sometimes very decided.
Everywhere else the two organs may be contiguous, or more or less near
together, but they are free from any adherence whatever. If the
plastic matters contained in the conjugated cells influence one
another reciprocally, no notable modification in their appearance
results at first. The large appendiculate cell seems, however, to
yield to its consort a portion of the plasma it contains. One thing
only can be affirmed from these phenomena, that the conjugated cells,
especially the larger, wither and empty themselves, while the upright
compressed filaments, which will ultimately constitute the asci,
increase and multiply.[M]

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Conjugation in _Peziza omphalodes_. (Tu