Order FIMETARIALES 
By FRED Jay SEAVER 
Perithecia superficial or deeply sunken in the substratum, usually without 
stroma, but, when the latter is present, perithecia immersed with the necks 
slightly protruding, dark-colored, black or nearly so, occasionally dark-brown, 
subglobose, ovoid, or flask-shaped, smooth and naked or thickly clothed with 
bristle-like or flexuous hairs which are simple or branched and often overtop 
the perithecia forming a dense tuft; perithecial wall thin, membranaceous to 
coriaceous. Asci evanescent and scarcely visible in mature plants, or persis- 
tent but delicate, 4-many-spored. Spores simple or compound, often sur- 
rounded with a hyaline gelatinous envelope or with a long apiculus at each 
end, usually dark-colored, yellow to greenish, dark-brown or blackish, the 
compound spores often deeply constricted at the septa. Paraphyses persistent 
or evanescent. Plants growing on decaying materials of various kinds, 
especially on the dung of animals. 
Perithecia overtopped with a dense mass of hairs; asci and paraphy- 
ses evanescent. Fam, 1. CHAETOMIACEAE. 
Perithecia not overtopped with hairs; asci and paraphyses persistent 
but delicate. Fam, 2, FIMETARIACEAE. 
VoLuME 3, Part 1, 1910] 57 
