3o6 Alexander W. Evans, j 



semicircular in outline and slightly incurved. The receptacles 

 described are immature and do not therefore yield very satis- 

 factory characters, but Lindberg's description, so far as it goes, 

 would clearly apply to M. chenopoda. Even the characters 

 drawn from the thallus easily come within the range of variation 

 to be expected in so multiform a species, where both the texture 

 and the size of the pores differ widely in different plants. The 

 writer would therefore follow Stephani in reducing M. Dillenii 

 to synonymy, even in the absence of Lindberg's type material. 



The third synonym given in the Synopsis, Chlamidium indiciim, 

 is nothing but a nomen nudum. According to Corda it was based 

 on No. 375 of Sieber*s Flora Martinicensis. The Synopsis, how- 

 ever, in citing it as a synonym under M. chenopoda, states that 

 it was based on No. 378. In the Mitten herbarium a specimen 

 of No. 378 is preserved under the name M. martinicensis. This 

 plant, which probably represents the type of the manuscript spe- 

 cies M. martinicensis Spreng., is clearly referable to M. domin- ■ 

 gensis, as the authors of the Synopsis have already shown. 

 Their citation of No. 378 under Chlamidium indicum, therefore, 

 was probably an error or due to the fact that this number was 

 a mixture ; in any case Corda's species, in the absence of adequate 

 publication, deserves no further attention. 



If the work of Taylor is excepted it will be seen that writers 1 

 up to the time of the Synopsis Hepaticarum (1847) were prac- 1 

 tically unanimous in assigning to M. chenopoda a subentire or 

 shortly five-lobed female receptacle and a deeply four-cleft male 

 receptacle. The same thing may be said of subsequent writers. • 

 Unfortunately identical or similar characters have been assigned 

 to other species. Aside from M. Dillenii, which has already 

 been alluded to, M. cartilaginea, M. brasiliensis, and M. peruvi- 

 ana may be mentioned in this connection. The first was based 

 on material collected on the island of St. Vincent, no collector J 

 being named; the second on Brazilian material collected by 1 

 Sellow ; the third on Bolivian material collected by D'Orbigny. 



In M. cartilaginea the male receptacles are said by the authors 

 of the species to be shghtly convex and borne on very short 

 stalks, while the female receptacles are said to be minute and 

 entire or obsoletely crenulate. Schiffner, who studied the type 

 material, found that the female receptacles were immature and 

 that the so-called male receptacles were nothing more than 



