1900] Webster, — Naucoria Christinae 129 
ground; radiating ridges appear on the pileus in process of drying, 
and indeed it would almost seem as if some of the characteristics 
given by Fries, noticeably the toughness, the ridges, and the darker 
tints, had been drawn from plants that had partially dried either 
before or after collection. At any rate it has taken partly dry mate- 
rial to show the characteristics just noted. 
The spores are somewhat pip-shaped, more strongly pointed at one 
end, and somewhat flatter on one side; size 10 to 11 x 5p. ‘This 
agrees well with Quelet's “spores amygdaloid, ro to 12 m long,” as 
quoted by Saccardo. 
Saccardo, on what authority does not appear, gives the spores as 
being 4 to 5 by 3 to 4 m, dimensions which accord with those of the 
spores of Naucoria Jennyae Karsten, as described in Hedwigia, 1881, 
p. 178, a species, from its description and the author's note, evidently 
very close to W. Christinae, but said to be larger, and with lighter- 
colored, ovoid spores. 
Fries's figure (Icones, t. 121, f. 2) agrees fairly well. 
After the first collection in 1896, the plant was found in the same 
year in damp, mixed woods south of Houghton's Pond, in the Reser- 
vation; in 1898, August, in the original station, also in Weston, 
Mass., in October, on the low river bank, under chestnuts and maples, 
and in Melrose, Mass., under oaks on a hillside. It has also been 
found in the Middlesex Fells, in Lynn woods, near Worcester (Dr. 
G. E. Francis), near Gilead, Maine (Miss Kate Furbish), and at 
Centre Ossipee, N. H. (F. O. Grover). Specimens of most of these 
collections are in the herbarium of the Boston Mycological Club. 
It is most abundant in the Melrose station, where it was found in 
troops of several feet in extent, and in smaller groups, but not at all 
cespitose. The button stages have to be sought an inch or two below 
the surface, for they seem to arise from the lower layers of the humus, 
whence the base descends sometimes into the sandy soil below, and 
the stipe forces the pointed pileus up through the overlying leaf-mould 
to the surface. In places where the ground was covered with oak 
leaves, the stipes were longer, firmer, and flexuous, apparently having 
been forced by the non-resistant nature of the loose leaves to wind 
about in search of an opening through which they could reach light 
and air. At any rate, wherever the leaves were moist and firmly 
packed, holes were punched clean through by the straight upward 
thrust of the sharp-pointed buttons. 
