116 Transactions British Mycological Society. 
in tropical forms, they may attain a height of 2-5 mm. Both the 
stalked and sessile forms are usually clothed at the base with 
erect fascicles of hyphae arising from the basal stroma. The 
conidia are fusiform, straight, or straight with falcate tips, or 
slightly, but uniformly curved; they are up to eleven septate, 
but the septa are usually obscure, and frequently poorly de- 
veloped, only two or three being present and those irregularly 
spaced; they measure 50-105 X 5-7, asa rule, but sometimes 
are only 35p long. The short, curved, triseptate Fusarium 
conidium 18 x 4, which is common in Sphaerostilbe auranticola 
(Plate V, fig. 11), has been observed in one American gathering. 
The perithecia are crowded together on a well-developed 
stroma which often completely hides the scale insect (Plate III, 
fig. 7). They occur, in numbers up to about eighteen, in groups 
which may be a millimetre in diameter, and are usually at first _ 
partly covered by fascicles of hyphae arising from the stroma. 
When mature, they are bright orange red, darker round the 
ostiolum, glabrous, slightly rugose, opaque, globose, 0-3 mm. 
diameter, collapsing centrally as a rule; the ostiolum is minute, 
conical, acute, or scarcely evident. The cells of the perithecial 
wall are somewhat obscure, and the colour, by transmitted 
light, varies, according to the degree of maturity of the specimen, 
from yellow to red brown. The asci are cylindric, scarcely 
pedicellate, eight spored, spores obliquely uniseriate, go-116 x 
8-10 p. Paraphyses are present, but diffluent. The ascospores 
are elliptic, ends obtuse, one-septate, not constricted, hyaline 
or yellowish, minutely verrucose, 12-19 x 5-8 p. 
The perithecial stage of this species was first collected by 
Ravenel in North America but the specimens were assigned by 
Berkeley to Nectria muscivora B. and Br. The latter species 
had been found at King’s Cliffe, England, and had been des- 
cribed by Berkeley and Broome in Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Ser. 2, 
vol. vil, p. 188 (1851). It was parasitic on mosses. After their 
description, Berkeley and Broome added the note “We have 
this species from South Carolina on Jungermanniae.”” An ex- 
amination of the type specimen of Nectria muscivora shows that 
it is not the same as Ravenel’s species. Nectria muscivora has 
perithecia which have prominent papillaeform ostiola, and are 
embedded up to half their height, or up to the ostiolum, in a 
white floccose weft of mycelium; the perithecia are now amber 
coloured, the wall appearing hyaline by transmitted light; the 
ascospores are narrow oval to subfusoid, sometimes subcymbi- 
form, with apices rounded or subacute, one-septate, rough, 
15-24 x 6-8 py; it is listed in Saccardo as Calonectria, but I was 
unable to find more than one septum in the spores of the 
specimen examined by me. 
