Prof. G. de Notaris on the Tribe Sphseriaceae. 219 



Cryptogames recemment decouvertes en France/ and in the third 

 edition of the * Flore des environs de Paris' of Merat, and the 

 collections of Demazieres and others, with the help of which I 

 have been able to make a multitude of comparisons and clear 

 away no slight number of errors ; — errors which, without further 

 preface, appear to me incontestably to demonstrate — 



1st. That the progress in cryptogamic botany is chiefly owing 

 to microscopical observations. 



2ndly. That the classification of the Pyrenomycetes especially 

 can never be natural nor philosophical, until we know the most 

 minute particulars of the fructification of the species. 



Besides which, if in the classification of many other tribes of 

 fungi, and in defining the genera and species of the Perisporiacei, 

 Myxogastres, Mucorini, Coniomycetes, &c., part of the characters 

 are furnished by the peridia and sporidia, why should such cha- 

 racters be altogether rejected in the Pyrenomycetes, in which these 

 organs are more complicated, and consequently rank higher in 

 the series of organized structure ? 



The suspicion that differences in the fructifying parts of the 

 genus Spharia might be found, had arisen in my mind from the 

 first moment in which I prepared myself to examine analytically 

 a few minute fungi, which I afterwards described and figured in 

 my decades of Micromycetes. During last winter, however, ha- 

 ving previously excluded those species in which 1 had not suc- 

 ceeded in finding a nucleus ascigeruSj 1 prepared with the utmost 

 diligence of which I was capable, the analysis, descriptions and 

 figures of 200 other Sphcerice ; and I assert that in identical spe- 

 cies, from whatever different region they came, and these often 

 growing on plants of different families, I have always found the 

 structure, size, colour and shape of the sporidia identical; while, on 

 the contrary, species properly distinct have never presented to me 

 sporidia of the same shape. How many times have I admired 

 in ecstasy the inexhaustible fullness of the great Creator of all 

 things, who has given to an organ essentially the same in its 

 nature and office such an infinite variety of form, so that each 

 species carries with it an invariable impress or token to distin- 

 guish it from its allies ! 



Still very far from the end I had proposed to myself, from want 

 of time, and not being able to embrace a larger field, I confine 

 myself at present to a notice respecting the tribe of indigenous 

 Pyrenomycetes Sphariacea, because on recui'ring to the exami- 

 nation of the most essential parts of the fruit,' they exhibit on a 

 small scale the basis on which I intend to proceed in their re- 

 arrangement; re- arrangement I say, because Greville, Corda, 

 Montague, and Fries himself in the ' Plantse Homonemese ' felt 

 the urgent necessity of lending a hand in the dismemberment of 



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