526 FOSSOMBRONIE. 
along with the antheridia, but slightly internal to them, stand rows of 
naked abortive pistillidia, as in Noteroclada and some Fossombronie ; 
which may be looked on as a paroicous inflorescence, limited only by 
the length of the stem. 
The Fossombroniew proper are distinguished from those of the follow- 
ing section by a globose or very slightly oval capsule of two (rarely of 
more) cell-layers, whereof the innermost cells include a spiral thread, 
either entire or broken up into rings. While most of the genera are 
frondose, there is no denying the existence of true leaves in Fossombronia 
and Noteroclada: a difference really of slight importance, as I have shown 
in my memoirs on Anomoclada and Cephalozia.* In the frondose Pellia 
epiphylla, P. calycina, &c., the frond is cut down sometimes nearly to the 
broad thin midrib into wide lobes (almost distinct leaves) which imbri- 
cate slightly at’ the edges; and the resemblance to Noteroclada is so close 
in the tleshy texture when fresh, flaccid when dry ; the antheridia enclosed 
in superficial pustules; the structure of the involucre (called a ‘‘perianth” 
in Noteroclada, but scarcely deserving the name); the inordinately long 
pedicel; the globose capsule, of tender consistence, so as to be sometimes 
imperfectly valvular in dehiscence, although not fragmentary as in os- 
sombronia ; and the elaters persisting for a while, gathered into a ball in 
the base of the capsule: that there is no disputing the near affinity of the 
two genera. 
The genera included in the 3 Leptothecee agree in one remarkable 
character, hardly found elsewhere in Jungermaniacee, viz. the long cylin- 
drical capsule of only a single layer of cells, which contain no spiral or 
annular fibre. The two genera of this section most closely allied, Sym- 
phyogyna and Pallavicinia (Blyttia Syn. Hep.), have been previously 
placed in distinct suborders, because in the latter there is a distinct peri- 
anth and none in the former: almost the only difference between them, 
and serving to show how very fallacious may be the reliance on a purely 
negative character, such as the gymnomitrous fruit of a hepatic or the 
gymnostomous capsule of a moss. 
The anomalous genus Scalia (Haplomitrium Nees) stands among Lepto- 
thecew purely by virtue of the form and structure of its capsule ; “but in 
its remaining characters it is almost as widely separated from ‘them as 
from all other hepatic (the eastern Rhopalanthus Lindberg, and Calo- 
bryum N. perhaps excepted).— Hooker has been taken to task for calling 
the elaters of Scalia Hookert (Lyell) monospirous, when they are di- 
spirous; but in reality, in the Andine as well as in the British species, a 
few elaters that remain attached to the apex of the valves for some time 
after the others are freed contain a helix of only a single thread; and it 
was doubtless these apical elaters alone that Hooker examined and 
figured, 
XXXIV. FOSSOMBRONIA, Raddi. 
In Act. Se. Soc. Moden. (1820); Lindberg Manip. Muscorum sec. 
in Notis. pro F. et Fl. Fenn. (1874). 
Plante pusille tenerrime, seepius pallida, inodore vel foetide, 
* The leaves in the solitary species of Noteroclada described below are con- 
siderably imbricated, but in Taylor’s N. conflwens they are either only slightly 
imbricated, or even merely contiguous, but never at all confluent, as 1 have 
ascertained by the examination of his original specimens, so that the specific 
name is not a happy one. 
