138 IfrrTuRNEn's Descriptions of Eight New British Lichens, 



rent, quod, si per lentem conspiciantur, e discis plurimis in eodem 

 apothecio nidulantibus pendere cernes. 



Substantia primd membranacea, mox tartarea. 



In the Metkodus Lichenum there is, perhaps, no genus of 

 which the fructification is so unsatisfactorily explained as that 

 of Variolaria, nor any term which is used so indefinitely as that 

 of Soredia, applied by the learned author to the receptacles of 

 this tribe. Upon this subject I should have been tempted here 

 to have transmitted some observations, had not Dr. Acharius 

 himself lately apprised me, that in his Lichenographia universalis, 

 now just ready for the press, the true apothecia* of these plants 

 will be carefully described, and the whole character of the ge- 

 nus revised and amended. 1 therefore leave the subject to his 

 more able hands, confining my remarks to the present and fol- 

 lowing species. Variolaria multipimcta is found by Mr. Borrer 

 in abundance upon the younger branches of the Beech in Sus- 

 sex, but I have never received it from any other quarter : it is 

 not only a very beautiful, but a curious and interesting species, 

 showing the transition of nature from these plants to the Thelo- 

 tremata, its receptacle, which, viewed by the naked eye, ap- 

 pears only pitted on the surface, being in reality common to two 

 or three pale waxy disks, in which circumstance, I believe, it dif- 

 fers from every other species already known. The old apothecia 

 have greatly the appearance of the shields of a Parmelia, and 

 in these the surface of the disk is dark gray, the margin being 

 of the colour, as well as the substance, of the crust, and inflex- 

 ed. The crust is white within, except that it has a thin layer 



* I am aware that Acharius, in his Methodus, denies Apothecia to the Variolaria? ; 

 but in a letter which I lately received from kim, he admits their existence, and I have 

 therefore not hesitated here to employ the term. 



Of 



