52 HEPATIC^. [Lunularia. 



that he delineated from specimens intermixed with Lunularia vulgaris, 

 an association extremely common. The male receptacles are gene- 

 rally on distinct plants, and are of a dusky purple, roundish, margin- 

 ated, flattish above, sessile, immersed in the frond, and, as in the pre- 

 ceding, not adherent but by a point at. their bases. Oil the upper sur- 

 face appear dark purple elevations, with a minute aperture on the 

 summit, out of which the milky pollen exudes. The female recep- 

 tacles at first roundish, then hemispherical, again assume a rounded 

 form, from the swelling of the capsules beneath ; they are divided into 

 from four to six lobes, each covering a loculus, which opens with a 

 vertical fissure, The loculi are two-valved, each valve involute at the 

 margin. Capsules solitary, sometimes two in a loculus, whose extre- 

 mity they never pass, being scarcely furnished with pedicells as in the 

 preceding. The calyptra bearing a style at length bursts, remaining 

 within the loculus. After the most diligent search of numerous speci- 

 mens I could never find any calyces, organs that form an important 

 part of the character of the genus Grimmaldia of lladdi and Lin- 

 denberg, constructed on this plant. The seeds at first appear as glo- 

 bules, surrounded by a pellucid annulus ; in ten or fifteen days the 

 globules are divided into three equal parts by pellucid lines ; if either 

 of these sub-divisions be forcibly pressed, it bursts into numerous 

 minute dark points, which, perhaps, future observations may prove to 

 be the true seed?. I have found a similar structure in all the Mar- 

 chantiece, in Targionia, and several Jungermannice, especially the 

 ftondose. But what at present are termed seeds are at first yellow, 

 afterwards of a dusky olive, triquetro-subrotundate, girt with a pellucid 

 ring. The filaments enclose two dark spiral lines. The exterior 

 scales of the indusium are broad, deeply incised, the interior linear, 

 longer, all of them whitish, reticulated, before the rising of the peduncle 

 enveloping the female receptacle, but after that event the interior are 

 raised with the base of the receptacle, and remain adherent to the 

 points of its junction with the peduncle ; hence its pilose appearance, 

 A few of the scales, here and there, stick to the peduncle. 



3. LUNULARIA. Micheli. 



Male Receptacle sessile, with a membranaceous elevated margin. 

 Female Receptacle deeply divided into narrow taper loculi ; 

 Loculi opening with a horizontal fissure : Calyces none : Cap- 

 sule 4-valved, exserted. 



1. L. vulgaris ; Micheli Nov. Gen. 4, t. 4. Raddi in Opusc. 

 Scient. di Bologna, 2, 355. Marchantia -cruciata, Linn. sp. pi. 

 1604. Haller St. Helv. ed. 1768, torn. 3, p. 65, No. 1888. Huds. 

 Fl. Aug. p. 52, With. Syst. Arr. ed, 1801, vol. 3, p. 869. Dillen. 

 Muse. t. 75, /. 5. 



On dry banks, principally in limestone districts ; common. Flower- 

 ing at Dunkerron, County of Kerry, in August. Fronds densely gre- 

 garious, one to two inches in length ; in green-houses, however, from 

 three to four inches ; of a light green, shining, oblong, broader at the 

 top, divided into three or four lobes, of which the lateral are the 

 shorter, and at the end of their sinuses the fruit is borne. The mar- 

 gins of the fronds are waved and elevated ; the pores are analogous 

 to those of the genns Fenatella, not Marchantia, Besides rootlets, 



