386 HERRE 



Pedro, at an altitude of 300 feet. A few plants also found on 

 sandstone at Pescadero Point, at an elevation of 50 feet. 



A very distinct lichen, always associated with Lecanora pin- 

 guts Tuck., and X. bolanderi Tuck. 

 Lecanora -phrygmiitis Tuck. Lich. Calif. 19. 1866; Syn. N. 



Am. Lich. I : 182. 1882. 



XIX. Cladonia (Hill) Wainio. 



Thallus 2-fold ; the primary one usually inconspicuous, of 

 horizontal or up-turned, more or less leafy squamules or merely 

 granular; the secondary one more conspicuous, forming the 

 "plant," of upright hollow podetia, which ma}^ be simple and 

 club-, cup- or funnel-shaped, or shrub-like and much branched ; 

 apothecia cephaloid, red or brown, borne on the tips of the 

 podetia; spores ovoid-oblong, simple, colorless, small, very 

 much alike in all the species. 



The species of Cladonia are comparatively few in number, 

 but are of wide distribution and within certain limits are greatly 

 variable. The boundaries of some of the species are therefore 

 difficult to define, but all the members of the genus are readily 

 recognizable as Cladonias. 



An almost indefinite number of varieties, sub-varieties, and 

 forms have been described, and what one author has described 

 another has recast and subdivided until great confusion is the 

 result. 



From a single handful plucked from a thick mat of some Cla- 

 donia one may isolate a dozen of the named varieties of certain 

 authors, until as a result one has a separate name for almost every 

 individual in the lot. This, it seems to me, is the rcductio ad 

 absiirdum of classification. 



That all differing forms should be segregated is self-evident, 

 but to give a name and a description to every individual varia- 

 tion is to make a farce of systematic botanical or zoological 

 work, while to take no account of the plasticity of organisms 

 and their consequent yielding to the varying environmental 

 conditions is to shut one's eyes to the larger phases of scientific 

 vvork. 



Ill the present paper the material has been described in ac- 



