516 DR. LINDSAY ON NEW-ZEALAND LICHENS. 
resemble in size those of P. levigata in some of its varieties (e. g. sinuosa). Sometimes 
they have thickened black edges, then appearing as if bounded by a lateral black rib, 
The plant is frequently associated on the same rock or boulder with P. caperata and 
P. Mougeottii, species with which it is constantly confounded in herbaria. The transi. 
tion-stages, indeed, are so gradual between these three presently so-considered species, 
and their essential characters are so much alike, that it would be quite in accordance 
with nature to refer all, as mere forms or varieties, to a single type. 
I found P. conspersa abundant on the hard basaltic tuffs of Wanganui or Beeson's 
Island, Coromandel Harbour, Auckland province (in fruit, Feb. 1862) ; and there is every 
reason to consider it not only one of the most common saxicolous lichens of Otago, but 
of New Zealand, differing in no essential from, and just as variable as, the British plant. 
2. In herbarium Kew: New Zealand, Colenso; on rocks and trees, Bay of Plenty, 
in fruit, Dr. Joliffe, 1853. "Thallus, especially when sterile, roughened with isidioid 
growths, just as in Otago and Scotch specimens. 
P. moniliformis, Bab. (Linds. Spermog. 220) from new Zealand, Colenso, Nos. 863 
and 2685, in herbarium Kew, seems, if not a mere form of P. conspersa, at least closely 
allied thereto. 
Sp. 7. P. caPERATA, Ach. (Fig. 9.) [Linds. Spermog. 207, plate xi. figs. 13, 14.] 
1. On basaltie boulders, summit of Kaikorai Hill, near Dunedin, Otago: W.L.L: 
associated with forms of Physcia stellaris and P. parietina. 
Spermogones abundant, prominent, central on the thallus, black-punctiform, immersed 
in thalline verrucosities, having quite the characters of those common in P. caperata 
rather than P. conspersa. Spermatia straight rods, :0002" long, -00005” broad, seated 
on sterigmata which are unusually distinct, frequently becoming granular and yellow 
under iodine, composed of several delicate, narrow, sublinear cellules, -0009” to 0012” 
long, and :00008" broad. 
The plant I here consider caperata, Nylander refers, in my herbarium and in that of 
Kew, to P. conspersa ; and I find in all herbaria great contrariety of opinion and great 
confusion as to the true position of the large-lobed forms of conspersa, and the small 
lobed forms of caperata, which, indeed, are simply transition-stages from the one plant 
into the other. The classification of these forms must always be arbitrary and changing; 
unless we place both plants under one species, and refer all its forms with broad, rounded, 
smooth lobes to var. caperata, and those with sublinear rough laciniæ to P. conspe” gos 
In my herbarium there are some forms of P. caperata from the Queen's Park, mr 
burgh, collected by Don, with divisions of the thallus quite as narrow as in the ordinary 
forms of P. conspersa. In herbarium Kew there are various North American form! 
(north-west coast, Douglas; Arctie America, Franklin's first journey ; Quebec, Morrison) 
which, though as large-lobed as many conditions of caperata, are referred by Ny lander 1° 
conspersa. In the same herbarium, also, there are sterile isidioid specimens of PER: 
rata from the North Island, N. Z .: Colenso. 
To the passage-forms between conspersa and caperata, I refer P. Tasmanica, 
Tasmania (Gunn), in my herbarium: in fruit, and spermogoniferous. The sperm 
Tayl ” from 
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