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minute plants could have retained, throughout the intense 

 cold of an Arctic winter, their delicate naked spores in 

 the state of perfection in which they were found, it was 

 inferred that they must have been developed during that 

 same summer ; while from four to five years, or even 

 less, in such high latitudes, amid all the severities of 

 stormy ice-covered seas, would suffice to produce the 

 bleached appearance which the wood exhibited. All the 

 circumstances of comparison between similar bleaching 

 processes and similar vegetable growths in this country, 

 are in favour of a recent exposure of the Arctic plank. 



As regards the vegetation on the other piece of drift- 

 wood, Mr. Berkeley found on its bleached surfaces a few 

 deeply imbedded minute black spots, very similar to those 

 of the Lepraria niyra, which in a confluent state fre- 

 quently forms wide inky or sooty patches on the squared 

 tops of rails and gate-posts, and especially on the roots of 

 felled oaks smoothed with the axe, in moist situations. On 

 account of this resemblance, this obscure and anomalous 

 production has been called Sporodermium lepmria. A 

 closer relation than, usual must subsist between it and 

 its matrix, for it is always found to accompany the white 

 spruce, as far as its branches are drifted by the waves. 

 Unlike the Phomas on the Arctic elm, which are very 

 ephemeral, this plant, with its lichen-like habit and 

 appearance, shares the longevity characteristic of that 

 tribe the same patches lasting for years unchanged on 

 the same piece of wood, and leaving behind traces of 

 their existence for a long time, even when the surround- 

 ing tissues are abraded by the elements, and the surfaces 

 worn away. The state in which the specks of it existed 



