F, Section through the surface tissue of the Brown Alga Cutleria multifida, showing the surface layer of assimilating cells densely packed with phaeoplasts.
The surface-layer of the body in the massive Fungi differs in character according, to its function, which is not constant throughout the class, as in the Algae, because of the very various conditions of life to which different Fungi are exposed.
The formation of a massive body naturally involves the localization of the absorptive region, and the function of absorption (which in the simpler forms is carried out by the whole of the vegetative part of the mycelium penetrating a solid or immersed in a liquid substratum) is subserved by the outgrowth of the hyphae of the surface-layer of that region into rhizoids, which, like those of the Algae living on soil, resemble the root-hairs of the higher plants.
The surface layer of the rhizome bears rhizoids, and its whole structure strikingly resembles that of the typical root of a vascular plant.
From the primitive uniform Systems. mass of undifferentiated assimilating cells, which we may conceive of as the starting-point of differentiation, though such an undifferentiated body is only actually realized in the thallus of the lower Algae, there is, (1) on the one hand, a specialization of a surface layer regulating the immediate relations of the plant with its surroundings.
