DR. LINDSAY ON WEST-GREENLAND LICHENS. 361 
Occasionally they resemble minute saucers made of red-coloured gelatine, or they are 
opaque, as if from intermixture of their colouring-matter with a whitish pruina. The 
translucency is in all cases assisted by moisture. Sometimes the disk is covered with a 
peach-coloured or whitish bloom, pruinosity being less common in the convex, deformed 
apothecia. The colour of the disk is sometimes that of light sherry or of flesh, or it as- 
sumes various dusky shades of buff- or reddish brown ; in some cases it becomes black. 
The brown and black hues are usually the results of age. The exciple, where it exists, is 
very thin. The outline and surface of the whole apothecium become, when flattish, some- 
times wavy or flexuous. Very seldom there is slight concavity of the disk. In all forms of 
apothecium the hymenium and its contents are the same. The hymenium gives, occa- 
sionally only, a very pale blue with iodine. The paraphyses and asci are indistinct. The 
sporidia vary considerably in structure. In all cases they are colourless. "Their shape is 
generally fusiform or narrowly ellipsoid, and straight, sometimes slightly curved or cres- 
centic. Their size varies from :0006" to *0009" long and :00020" to 00025" broad. In 
the young state, they are usually simple—sometimes granular or muco-granular—occa- 
sionally with faint double contour. In maturity and age they are from 2- to 4-locular, 
the septa frequently being obscurely marked. Those sporidia which are 2-locular, some- 
times split in age at the central septum ; whence it happens that half-sporidia occur with 
the entire forms on the microscope-field. Both in the young and the old state, instead of 
distinct loculi and septa, they exhibit sometimes two or more large os nuclei, usu- 
ally central, sometimes bipolar, with irregular outline in age. 
The plant has many of the characters of Biatora castanea, Hepp (Exs. No. 270, and 
Th. Fries, L. Arct. p. 195), and of Biatora Berengeriana, Mass., as I collected it in 
Norway in 1857, and as it is described (sub nom. B. miscella) in L. Arct. p. 194*. In 
certain respects, however (e. g. the sporidia), it differs from both. 
I dedicate this beautiful Greenland Lecidea to the distinguished author of the * Lichenes 
Arctoi’ and * Lichenes Spitsbergenses’ as an acknowledgment of the value of his many 
Contributions to the Lichen-Flora of Scandinavia and the Arctic regions. 
18. L. vernalis, L. (according to the restricted definition of Th. Fries, L. Arct. p. 191, 
who places it in Biatora, which has simple sporidia). Muscicolous, about the Illartlek 
. glacier; associated with Lecanora sophodes and Peltigera canina, Lyngemarken ; on de- 
cayed stems of herbaceous plants, Jakobshavn. The colour of the apothecia is very vari- 
able, and to a less extent their size, convexity, number, and degree of crowding. They 
are always convex and immarginate. They sometimes exhibit externally the varying cha- 
racters of those of Lecanora cerina, ulmicola, and leucoræa, and of Lecidea luteola; from 
all which, however, the sporidia distinguish vernalis. In all the Greenland forms the spo- 
ridia are simple, but they vary considerably in size and shape. Most usually they are fusi- 
form or narrowly ellipsoid, with or without a faint double contour. Sometimes they are 
granular in the young state. Their size is about “00045” to :00090" long and *00015" broad. 
In one form (from Lyngemarken) they are oval, like the larger sporidia of parasema, and 
‘00050 to :00060" long by :00025" broad. In this form the asci are 8-spored and bulge 
* The reader may also compare certain North-American corticolous Biatora, e. g. B. porphyritis, Tuckerman (Syn- 
opsis, p. 61) and its allies, 
VOL. XXVII. 3c 
