310 DR. LINDSAY ON WEST-GREENLAND LICHENS. 
Spitzbergen *. My herbarium contains a specimen similar to the Greenland plant, on 
moss from Branksdale, Yorkshire (Mudd); but in Britain it is more common on rotten 
tree-roots and trunks. 
There is considerable variation in the size and colour of the sporidia in specimens 
from different localities. Thus in the type in Scherer’s Exs. 14, they are colourless, 
spherical, with a diameter of 00013". In var. fulva, L., Scher. Exs. 296, they are pale 
brown, spherical, with a diameter of :000083". In var. sulphurella, Fr., Scheer. Exs. 
639, they are pale brown, simple, spherical, very abundant, with a diameter of :00010" 
to 00018". In another specimen, in Nylander’s Exs., they are pale brownish-yellow, 
sometimes granular, simple, spherical, with diameter of :000083". The spermogonia 
would appear to be rare; and, so far as I am aware, they have not been described or 
observed by other authors. I met with them in Scherer's Exs. no. 14, and Hepp's Exs. 
154 (—var. sulphuretia), as very minute, brown specks, scattered in great abundance, 
like grains of the finest dust, over the white pulverulent thallus. The envelope was of 
a deep brown, the spermatia atomic, and the sterigmata apparently very short and 
simple. There appears to be insufficient ground for separating Coniocybe, as a genus, 
from Calicium. 
Genus 4. SPHJEROPHORON. 
1. S. coralloides, Ach.—Mlartlek glacier; Egedesminde. Several forms occur, none of 
them in fruit, but some of them spermogoniferous. Spermogonia exist, in the typical 
form of the plant, only in one fragment, as deep-brown papillæ or ring-like warts, 
crowning the under surface ofthe pale nodding tips of the branchlets. The thallus in these 
forms is always glossy ; its surface frequently deformed by expansion and wart-growth ; 
the colour black, or black-mottled, or rusty-red—or mottled rusty-red, brown, or lilac. 
The tips of the ramuscles are conspicuously white, contrasting well with the buff or 
reddish-brown colour of other portions of the plant. 
Transition-forms between coralloides and compressum are common, possessing two 
distinct surfaces :—the one convex and deeply coloured; its opposite pale or white, and 
flattened, sometimes lacunose or fossulate. Spermogonia are more common on those 
forms which belong to compressum of authors. As they occur in this so-called species in 
other countries, they are figured in my * Memoir on Spermogones’# (plate v. figs. 44 
& 48, 49 & 52). Spermogonia, in the larger, laxer, more ramose forms of coralloides, 
occur on the nodding apices, just as in passage-forms to compressum. 
There are various dwarf states of coralloides in Greenland, one of which forms a flat, 
isidioid, but tessellated surface, and might appropriately be designated form isidioidea, 
were we to follow the example of systematists and give names to such mere stages of 
growth. Here the branches are short, simple, and compactly arranged, sometimes 
assuming a Pyenothelioid character, sometimes resembling forms of Lecanora tartarea or 
L. oculata. In other cases, they become broadened and subfoliaceous, resembling certain 
states of some of the foliaceous Cladonie, e.g. cervicornis. Sometimes these subfolia- 
* Th. Fries, Lich. Spitsb., p. 47. 
t The terms Spermogones and Spermogonia are synonymous, the former being simply the English representative of 
the Latin or Latinized word. 
