The Victorian naturalist . he middle of the day,a ring of thin membrane round eachcap is ruptured, and the cap is blownoff with great force, soaring throughthe air (to a distance of a few feetin the field), while the vesicle col-lapses like a pricked balloon (Fig. 2, C). A globule of sticky mucilagecomes away with the cap (Fig. 2, D).The upper surface of the cap is un-wettable, and surface tension causesthe cap to turn over on impact (, E); thus it adheres firmly to the leafon which it falls, or to the lid of theincubation dish, where the caps col-lect and are easily seen as small blackdo
The Victorian naturalist . he middle of the day,a ring of thin membrane round eachcap is ruptured, and the cap is blownoff with great force, soaring throughthe air (to a distance of a few feetin the field), while the vesicle col-lapses like a pricked balloon (Fig. 2, C). A globule of sticky mucilagecomes away with the cap (Fig. 2, D).The upper surface of the cap is un-wettable, and surface tension causesthe cap to turn over on impact (, E); thus it adheres firmly to the leafon which it falls, or to the lid of theincubation dish, where the caps col-lect and are easily seen as small blackdots. The caps are sporangia, each filledwith hundreds of yellow spores. Thesecan be examined under the micro-scope with a 1/6-inch or higher ob-jective, if a few sporangia are scrapedoff the lid and rubbed up in water:they are oval or oblong bodies, 10 to15 by 7 to 10 /x. The name Pilobolus is appro-priate: it means cap-missile. Weowe this knowledge of spore dis-semination to A. H. R. Buffer (Re-searches on Fungi VI, 1934).. Fig. 210 Drawn: H. A. Dade Vict. Nat.—Vol. 85 Spartina in Victoria E. C. F. Bird and K. G. Boston* During the past forty years, severalattempts have been made to introducethe salt marsh grass commonly calledRice Grass or Cord Grass, to es-tuaries, lagoons, and swamps on theVictorian coast. Known to botanistsas Spartina townsendii, this grass isbelieved to have originated about acentury ago in the estuarine marshesbordering Southampton Water insouthern England, as a result of hy-bridization between the native Britishspecies Spartina maritima and one ofthe North American species, Spartinaalterniflora, presumably introducedaccidentally. The new grass spreadrapidly to other estuarine sites on thesouth coast of England, and recogni-tion of its value as a means of stabiliz-ing and reclaiming tidal mudflats ledto its introduction to many estuarieson the coasts of Britain and WesternEurope, where it has since becomeextensive. Attempts have been madeto establish it
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdec, booksubjectnaturalhistory, bookyear1884
