Fossil plants, Vol. 1 : $b [A text-book] for students of botany and geologySeward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Science
Fossil plants, Vol. 1 : $b [A text-book] for students of botany and geology
Seward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Paleobotany
_Myxomycetes Mangini_ Ren.[400] It is not uncommon to find distinct
traces of original or secondary cell-contents in well preserved
petrified plant-tissues. There is often a difficulty, however, in
distinguishing between the true cell-contents and the cells of some
parasitic or saprophytic intruder. In some petrified corky tissue
in a silicified nodule from the Permo-Carboniferous beds of Autun,
Renault has recently discovered what he believes to be traces of a
Myxomycetous plasmodium. The cork-cells would be without protoplasmic
contents of their own, and their cavities contain a number of fine
strands stretching from the cell-walls in different directions and
uniting in places as irregular or more or less spherical masses. The
drawings given by Renault of these irregular reticulated structures
with scattered patches of what may possibly be petrified plasmodial
protoplasm bear a striking resemblance to the plasmodium of a
Myxomycete. A figure of the capillitium of a species of _Leocarpus_
figured by Schröter[401] in his account of the Myxomycetes in Engler
and Prantl’s work is very similar to that of Renault’s ‘plasmodium.’
It is by no means inconceivable that the _Myxomycetes Mangini_ may be
correctly referred to this group, but the wisdom of assigning a name to
such structures may well be questioned.
• • • • •
The other two examples call for little notice. Messrs Cash and
Hick[402] in a paper on fossil fungi from the Coal-Measures refer to
some small spherical bodies as possibly the spores of a Myxomycete.
They might be referred equally well to numerous other organisms.
Göppert and Menge[403] in their monograph on plants in the Baltic
Tertiary Amber, express the opinion that an ill-defined tangle of
threads which they figure may be a Myxomycete.
It would serve no useful purpose to quote other instances of possible
representatives of fossil Mycetozoa; but the consideration of the above
examples may serve to emphasize the desirability of refraining from
converting a possibility into an apparently recognised fact by the
application of definite generic and specific names.
VI. FUNGI.
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