198 DR. LINDSAY ON THE SPERMOGONES AND 
fellow lichenists who have bestowed the same amount of labour on the study of the 
minute anatomy, especially of the reproductive organs, of lichens. But, on the other 
hand, I do not admit a greater liability to error. In both my memoirs there may be 
observations or opinions recorded that subsequent research may prove to be absolute 
errors; and I do not doubt that a different interpretation of many supposed facts—a 
different determination of many so-called species*—will be offered by systematists, to 
whom all irregular or exceptional phenomena are distasteful and troublesome, as intro- 
ducing elements of confusion in classification, and who are given, therefore, to the 
attempt to explain away facts that militate against their arrangements. I can, however, 
say that I have carefully studied the secondary reproductive organs of Lichens for nearly 
fifteen years; that my later observations have only tended to confirm my earlier ones; 
that I feel myself shut up to adopt the interpretations of phenomena which I now 
announce; that I have quite failed to see the fairness or force of the objections 
of dogmatic systematists, who have ventured rashly to criticise the results of the 
more thorough labours of biologists; and that other observers in other countries have 
latterly been meeting with results, and arriving at interpretations, similar to my 
ownt. 
I have already mentioned that discrepancies between authors, in regard to the cha- 
racters of the spermogones and pycnides, sterigmata and spermatia, basidia and stylo- 
spores, of the same species, are apt to be explained on the supposition of errors of 
observation or determination. It appears to me, however, that a much more legitimate 
and probable explanation is to be looked for in the phenomena of Polymorphism and 
Plurality, as hereinbefore and hereinafter described. It seems to me only fair and 
charitable to suppose, especially in the case of common cosmopolite species, that it is 
really the same species that has been examined, under the same name, by different ob- 
servers, and that, however diverse in character their descriptions of its spermogones and 
pyenides, they are all essentially correct, and merely illustrate the variability, or plurality, 
of form, formerly pointed out. I am assuming—as I think I am quite justified in doing 
— that the author who publishes his results and their interpretation has not done so 
without due consideration, and that he possesses the necessary experience and skill in the 
observation and interpretation of phenomena so intricate. A similar charitable or just 
construction has not, however, been put on the results or opinions of such biologists as 
Tulasne and Berkeley, by fellow-labourers to whom these results or Opinions were at 
the moment a startling novelty{. Nor do I hope to escape—nor, indeed, have I already 
eseaped—from injustice or misinterpretation of such a kind$. Illustrations of diversity 
of description among systematists, attributable perhaps to polymorphism in, or plurality 
* Thus it may be asserted, in order to account for the presence of vermiform spermatia on simple sterigmata, 
that Lecanora atra, nos. 5, 6, 7, was really L. subfusca. But this would not account for the presence of pyenides 
in no. 7! Vide also Lecanora calva and L. cerina. 
k Vide Paper on * Polymorphism," p. 2. 
i Vide “New Lichenicolous Micro-Fungi,” p. 521, footnote*, and ** Monograph of Abrothallus,” pp. 29, 30. 
§ Vide Nylander in Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany, vol. ix. p. 341. 
