Any student of fungi is inevitably impressed by instances of apparent parallel evolution. Indeed, it is these homoplastic tendencies that make it so difficult to achieve 'natural' classifications within the Fungi. There are many well-known examples. The holocarpic olpidioid thallus seems to have arisen independently in a number of separate orders of Phycomyces. This distinctive type is found in Olpidium (Chytridiales), Olpidiopsis (Lagenidiales) and Anisolpidium (Hyphochytriales). Again the macroscopic hypogeal fruit-body, adapted apparently to rodent dispersal, has evolved in Endogone (Mucorales), in the Hymenogastraceae (Basidiomycetes) and along several seemingly distinct lines in Ascomycetes (e.g. Elaphomyces and Tuber). The intracellular haustorium, formed as a branch from the main, and usually intercellular, mycelium, is found for example in Zoopagales, Peronosporales, Erysiphales and Uredinales, having probably evolved independently in all these orders. The perithecium of, for instance, Sordaria and the pseudothecium of such a fungus as Sporormia are biologically similar but developmentally very different, so that again parallel evolution seems to have occurred. In Hymenomycetes the transition from gills to the polyporous condition appears to have happened again and again, for example, along the Mycena-Mycenoporella line and along the Paxillus-Boletus pathway. I have been at pains in recent years to attempt to demonstrate the independent development of the tetra-radiate conidium in many different ways amongst aquatic Hyphomycetes. Recently I have been struck by the stalked spore-drop as another example of homoplasy and this is the subject of the present note. Six very different fungi with this type of apparatus are illustrated in Fig. i namely: Mucor ramannianus Moeller in Phycomycetes; Dipodascus uninucleatus Biggs, Cephaloascus fragrans Hanawa (=Ascocybe grovesii Wells) and Ceratocystis adiposa (Butl.) C. Moreau in Ascomycetes; and Gliocladium roseum (Link ex Fr.) Bainier and Graphium cuneiferum (Berk. & Br.) Mason & M. B. Ellis in the Fungi Imperfecti. Further the same essential mechanism is figured in Dictyostelium discoideum K. B. Raper, although most would not include this organism in the Fungi in spite of the fact that it has been studied largely by mycologists. First the spore-drop itself may be considered. In Mucor it arises from the conversion of a sporangium into a sporangial drop following the solution of the 'diffluent' sporangial wall. In Dipodascus it is the extruded contents of a large, many-spored ascus. In Cephaloascus it is formed from a compact group of small 4-spored asci the walls of which are deliquescent. In Ceratocystis it is a slimy mass of minute ascospores which exude at the ostiole of a perithecium. In Gliocladium and Grap hium it is a mass of conidia (phialospores) produced, together with slime, from a terminal group of phialides. In Dictyostelium it is a mass of encysted amoebae in a fluid matrix.