224 THE NORTH AMERICAN SLIME-MOULDS 



the form figured by Rostafinski, Tab. II., Fig. 27, and Massee, PI. 

 1, Fig. 11, has not come to our notice. The parallelism of the net 

 threads is a touch added by Rostafinski ; Schrader does not mention 

 it. Lister makes this species include the preceding. The form 

 described in Bull. Lab. Nat. Hist. la. XL, p. 119, is C. dictydioides. 



Reported from New York, New England and Pennsylvania. 



In the English Monograph we are repeatedly assured that this 

 species is common in the United States. The statement is made 

 possible only by the inclusion of the form originally described from 

 America and truly abundant east of the Rocky Mountains, C. dic- 

 tydioides Cke. & Balf. ; C. intricate, by all accounts, just as pre- 

 eminently the species of Europe. It is true that Schrader did not 

 emphasize the parallel connecting threads by which later authorities 

 distinguish the form; he had little occasion so to do, even did his 

 figures intend accuracy in each detail, which they did not, and Rosta- 

 finski's, though his drawing is a diagram, certainly knew what he was 

 doing. Cooke, in his list for Great Britain, quotes the Polish text 

 without dissent, and Massee follows and illustrates; so that there can 

 be no doubt as to what the European species is. 



In any cribraria the presence or relative obsolesence, of the calyc- 

 ulus is of little taxonomic import since that structure is variable 

 in every species. In the latest edition of Mr. Lister's work, the 

 American form is entered as a variety in "hot-houses"; apparently 

 adventitious; it is indeed related to the European form but is a geo- 

 graphic species. 



9. Cribraria piriformis Schrader. 



Plate XVII., Fig. 9 ; Plate XIX., Fig. 9. 



1797. Cribraria piriformis Schrad., Nov. Gen. PL, p. 4. 



Sporangia gregarious, small, .3-.5 mm., turbinate or globose, erect, 

 purplish brown, stipitate ; stipe comparatively short, tapering upward, 

 longitudinally furrowed, purple or brown ; calyculus very well de- 

 fined, about one-third the sporangium, not ribbed, flattened or even 

 umbilicate below, the margin plainly denticulate, dusky brown; the 

 net simple, the meshes large, triangular, with few free ends; the 



