[A] Cunningham, in "Ninth Annual Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India." Calcutta, 1872.
[C] Corda, "Icones Fungorum," vol. vi. Prague.
[E] Winter, "Die Deutschen Sordarien" (1873).
[F] Corda, "Icones Fungorum," 6 vols. (1837-1842); Sturm, "Deutschlands Flora," Pilze (1841); Tulasne, "Selecta Fungorum Carpologia;" Bischoff, "Kryptogamenkunde" (1860); Corda, "Anleitung zum Studium der Mykologie" (1842); Fresenius, "Beiträge zur Mykologie" (1850); Nees Ton Esenbeck, "Das System der Pilze" (1816); Bonorden, "Handbuch der Allgemeinen Mykologie" (1851).
In describing the structure of these organisms in a previous chapter, the modes of germination and growth from the spores have been purposely excluded and reserved for the present. It may be assumed that the reader, having followed us to this point, is prepared for our observations by some knowledge of the chief features of structure in the principal groups, and of the main distinctions in the classification, or at least sufficient to obviate any repetition here. In very many species it is by no means difficult to induce germination of the spores, whilst in others success is by no means certain.
M. de Seynes made the _Hymenomycetes_ an especial object of study,[A] but he can give us no information on the germination and growth of the spore. Hitherto almost nothing is positively known. As to the form of the spore, it is always at first spherical, which it retains for a long time, while attached to the basidia, and in some species, but rarely, this form is final, as in _Ag. terreus_, &c. The most usual form is either ovoid or regularly elliptic. All the _Coprini_ have the spores oval, ovoid, more or less elongated or attenuated from the hilum, which is more translucent than the rest of the spore. This last form is rather general amongst the Leucospores, in _Amanita_, _Lepiota_, &c. At other times the spores are fusiform, with regularly attenuated extremities, as in _Ag. ermineus_, Fr., or with obtuse extremities, as in _Ag. rutilans_, Sch. In _Hygrophorus_ they are rather irregular, reniform, or compressed in the centre all round. Hoffmann[B] has given a figure taken from _Ag. chlorophanus_, and Seynes verified it upon _Ag. ceraceus_, Sow. (See figures on page 121.)