[TBXT-FIO. 2]. BOTH to those who are interested in the biology of plants and to those engaged in the study of plant ecology, Sernander's " Entwurf einer Monographie der Europaischen Myrmekochoren'," will be a welcome source of information. Already in an earlier Swedish publication^ (with German summary) Sernander had distinguished three ways which animals might aid in the dispersal of seeds and fruits. If feeding on succulent fruits they pass the seeds through the alimentary canal, he applies the name of endozoic to the method of distribution, while he uses the term epizoic for the dispersal of fruits which adhere by means of hooks or sticky glands to passing animals. A third method of dispersal in which animals intentionally collect seeds or fruits which they may either let fall on the way or carry to their nests Sernander designates as synzoic. As instances of this method he cites the carrying off of nuts and other fruits by certain rodents, and particularly the transportation of small fruits and seeds by various specie^ of ants. It is to a thorough investigation of this latter agency that the recent monograph, running to some 400 quarto pages, is devoted. To describe this particular case of synzoic distribution, Sernander uses the term myrmecochorous (jjL6pii.yi= an ant; %w/jea) = 1 wander), a term independently used by Beguinot and Traversa' in the same sense.After referring to some of the more or less well-known instances of the dispersal of seeds by ants, such as the observations of Moggridge* and Lubbock' on the seeds of the violet, of Lundstr6m«
With Plates XVHI and XIX and a Figure in the Text LL who have investigated the microscopic structure of fossil plants \ are familiar with traces of fungal hyphae and occasional fungal sporangia in and around the plant-remains. An excellent critical account of our knowledge of such fossil Fungi will be found in Seward's ' Manual of Fossil Plants' ('98), in which he has not only recorded the Fungi described by Williamson, Renault, Conwentz, and other observers, but discusses their possible systematic position. In • summing' up our knowledge of this group of plants, he remarks that 'we have fairly good and conclusive evidence of the existence in Permo-Carboniferous times of Phycomycetous Fungi.' Judging from the appearance of the tissues in which these Fungi are found, one is led to the conclusion that they were for the greater part of a saprophytic nature. This would seem more particularly so in the case of the fossil plants from the English Coal-Measures, the internal structure of which is so fully known from the remains found in the nodular concretions, the so-called 'coal-balls' of the Bullion Coal. In these coal-balls, which, according to Lomax ('02), were probably not formed in situ, the plantremains are often of a very fragmentary character, and show traces of having undergone considerable decomposition. The tissues are often penetrated by Stigmarian rootlets, and show signs of having been bored by wood-eating animals. They also show not infrequently internal mycelia, while apparent fungal sporangia are found both within the fossil plants and in the debris lying between them. Indeed, the conditions under which these nodules were formed would seem to have been most favourable for the growth of saprophytic Fungi. Some of the fossil Fungi, however, from the silicified nodules at Grand Croix which have been described by Renault ('83) and Bertrand f 85), and more recently by Oliver ('03), seem to have been of a parasitic nature and to have belonged probably to the group of Chytridiaceae. One form, indeed, which appears to have been parasitic on the
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