Prof. G. de Notaris on the Tribe Spheeriacee. 219 
Cryptogames récemment découvertes en France,’ and in the third 
edition of the ‘Flore des environs de Paris’ of Merat, and the 
collections of Demaziéres and others, with the help of which I 
have been able to make a multitude of comparisons and clear 
away no slight number of errors ;—errors which, without further 
preface, appear to me incontestably to demonstrate— 
Ist. That the progress in cryptogamic botany is chiefly owing 
to microscopical observations. 
2ndly. That the classification of the Pyrenomycetes especially 
can never be natural nor philosophical, until we know the most 
minute particulars of the fructification of the species. 
Besides which, if in the classification of many other tribes of 
fungi, and im definmg the genera and species of the Perisporiacet, 
Myzxogastres, Mucorini, Coniomycetes, &c., part of the characters 
are furnished by the peridia and sporidia, why should such cha- 
racters be altogether rejected in the Pyrenomycetes, in which these 
organs are more complicated, and consequently rank higher in 
the series of organized structure ? 
The suspicion that differences in the fructifying parts of the 
genus Spheria might be found, had arisen in my mind from the 
first moment in which I prepared myself to examine analytically 
a few minute fungi, which I afterwards described and figured in 
my decades of Micromycetes. During last winter, however, ha- 
ving previously excluded those species in which I had not suc- 
ceeded in finding a nucleus ascigerus, I prepared with the utmost 
diligence of which I was capable, the analysis, descriptions and 
figures of 200 other Spherie; and | assert that in identical spe- 
cies, from whatever different region they came, and these often 
growing on plants of different families, I have always found the 
structure, size, colour and shape of the sporidia identical; while, on 
the contrary, species properly distinct have never presented to me 
sporidia of the same shape. How many times have I admired 
in ecstasy the mexhaustible fullness of the great Creator of all 
things, who has given to an organ essentially the same in its 
nature and office such an infinite variety of form, so that each 
species carries with it an invariable impress or token to distin- 
guish it from its alles! 
Still very far from the end I had proposed to myself, from want 
of time, and not being able to embrace a larger field, I confine 
myself at present to a notice respecting the tribe of indigenous 
Pyrenomycetes Spheriacee, because on recurring to the exami- 
nation of the most essential parts of the fruit, they exhibit on a 
small scale the basis on which I intend to proceed in their re- 
arrangement ; re-arrangement | say, because Greville, Corda, 
Montagne, and Fries himself in the ‘ Plante Homonemee’ felt 
the urgent necessity of lending a hand in the dismemberment of 
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