92 REVIEWS. [April, 



custom lazily and ignorantly to refer minute, black, point-like, 

 or spot-like parasitic Lichens to tlie great family of the Fungi ; 

 but I feel assured that many species of Sph(B7'ia, Dothidea, Pe- 

 ziza, and other Fungi, presently so called, which are parasitic 

 on the thallus of various familiar Lichens, will ultimately be 

 found to belong themselves to the ranks of the Lichens. I attri- 

 bute however no blame to my predecessors for having erred in 

 regard to the structure and place in classification of these minute 

 organisms. Nay, I do not see how such errors could have been 

 avoided; for the parasitic Lichens to which I refer could not 

 have been properly studied prior to the introduction of the mi- 

 croscope, etc." 



Our author reduces Tulasne's five species of Abrothallus to 

 two, discarding A. inquinans, and combining A. Wehvitzschii 

 and A. 7nicrospermus under the name A. Smithii, which forms 

 three varieties or sub-species, ater, pulverulentus , and microsper- 

 mus : the species A. oxysporus he retains. 



The genus is well illustrated by two coloured plates, contain- 

 ing highly magnified figures of these species, and of portions of 

 the Lichens on which they grow. 



Dr. Lindsay well deserves the encouragement and commenda- 

 tion of all the friends of botanical science, for his disinterested 

 labours in the cause oi progress. Art is largely indebted to him 

 for his many communications on the colorific properties of Li- 

 chens, a family of plants which he has taken under his protection 

 and patronage. But for the sake of the many who do not under- 

 stand the magniloquent terms of modern science, we wish he 

 would condescend to manifest a little more sympathy for people 

 not quite so learned as he himself is. As it is possible to write 

 learnedly without learned language, so it is not impossible to 

 write scientifically without the use of such unusual words as 

 differentiation, ostioie, maturescence, anamorphoses, and the like, 

 which convey no idea that is not expressible by distinction or 

 distinctness, pore, ripeness or maturity, malformation, etc., and 

 similar less neologistic-like terms. Dr. Lindsay cannot believe, 

 nor imagine that his readers entertain, the omne ignotum pro 

 magnifico notion, or that people admire only what they do not 

 understand. 



