The germination of the black fruits of _Phragmidium_ only appears to take place in the spring. It greatly resembles that in _Puccinia_, except that the filament is shorter, and the sporules are spherical and orange-coloured, instead of being kidney-shaped and pale. In the species found on the leaves of the common bramble, the filament emitted by each cell attains three or four times the length of the fruit. The granular orange protoplasm which fills it passes ere long into the sporules, which are engendered at the extremity of pointed spicules. After the long warty fruits are emptied of their contents they still seem as dark as before, but the pores which are pierced in the sides, through which the germinating filaments have proceeded, are more distinctly visible. It will be observed that throughout all these allied genera of _Uromyces_, _Puccinia_, _Triphragmium_, and _Phragmidium_ the same type of germination prevails, which confirms the accuracy of their classification together, and renders still less probable the supposed affinity of _Phragmidium_ with _Sporidesmium_, which was at one time held by very astute mycologists, but which is now abandoned. This study of germination leads also to a very definite conclusion with regard to the genus _Uromyces_--that it is much more closely related to _Puccinia_ and its immediate allies than to other unicellular Uredines. The germination of the pseudospores of the gelatinous Uredines of the genus _Podisoma_ was studied by Tulasne.[H] These pretended spores, he writes, are formed of two large conical cells, opposed by their base and easily separating. They vary in length. The membrane of which they are formed is thin and completely colourless in most of them, though much thicker and coloured brown in others. It is principally the spores with thin membranes that emit from near the middle very obtuse tubes, into which by degrees, as they elongate, the contents of the parent utricles pass. Each of the two cells of the supposed spore may originate near its base four of these tubes, opposed to each other at their point of origin, and their subsequent direction; but it is rather rare for eight tubes, two by two, to decussate from the same spore or basidium. Usually there are only two or three which are completely developed, and these tend together towards the surface of the fungus, which they pass, and expand at liberty in the air. The tubes generally become thicker by degrees as they elongate, some only slightly exceeding the length of the protospores. Others attain three or four times that length, according to the greater or less distance between the protospore and the surface of the plant. In the longest tubes it is easy to observe how the colouring matter passes to their outer extremity, leaving the portion nearest to the parent cell colourless and lifeless. When nearly attaining their ultimate dimensions, all the tubes are divided towards their outer extremity by