516 
cerned. These had the good fortune to have been more accu- 
rately figured and described by the predecessors whom he quotes, 
to be confessedly European, and to be understood by his contem- 
poraries. But now that there is not the least manner of doubt as 
to what the Porel/a of Dillenius and Linnaeus was, there seems to 
be no good reason why it should not stand as the name of the 
genus. Professor Underwood has this last summer examined the 
specimen in question in the Dillenian Herbarium at Oxford and 
adds his testimony to that of others to the effect that the plant is 
congeneric with the traditional /ungermannia platyphylla of Lin- 
naeus and clearly identical specifically with the common hepatic 
of the eastern United States, known to Nees and his followers as 
Madotheca Porella. 
PORELLA L. Sp. Pl. 2: 1106. 1753. Ex. Dill. Hist. Musc. 
459. pl. 68. 1741. 
Plants large, dark-green to yellowish-brown, mostly somewhat 
regularly bi- or tri-pinnate, rarely subsimple ; root-hairs in tufts at 
the base of the underleaves, usually sparingly developed. Leaves 
very deeply 2-parted ; the dorsal lobes large, incubous, obliquely 
orbicular-ovate to oblong, entire, repand or somewhat dentate ; 
ventral lobes much smaller than the dorsal, sometimes nearly dis- 
crete, ovate, lingulate, oblong, linear, or lanceolate, nearly parallel 
with the stem, entire or toothed, margins plane or revolute. Un- 
derleaves large, somewhat similar in form to the ventral lobes but 
usually broader, entire or dentate, often long decurrent on both 
sides. Antheridia spherical, very short-stalked, single in the axils 
of saccate, densely imbricate, nearly equally bilobed opposite leaves, 
these connate with the underleaves and forming short, lateral, oval 
to linear-oblong spikes. Archegonia generally numerous, terminal 
on very short (most rarely a little elongated) lateral branches. — 
Perianth oval to obovate, flattened dorso-ventrally toward the 
mouth, from, a more or less obconical base, much longer than the 
bracts, two-lipped after elevation of the capsule or sometimes ir- 
regularly torn, mouth ciliate, dentate, or subentire. Bracts usually 
a single pair with a single bracteole in addition to the underleaf 
at the base of the branch, the latter underleaf united with the sub- 
tending cauline leaf and functioning as its ventral lobe, or free, 
leaving the cauline leaf unlobed. Capsule spherical to oval-oblong, 
on a short seta, yellowish-brown, opening, usually not quite to the 
base, by four often irregularly split valves; cell-walls of the 
