PYCNIDES OF CRUSTACEOUS LICHENS. 201 
The links that connect the lichens with the fungi are most numerous and evident in 
the lower orders of both families ; as respects lichens among the Lecidee, Verrucarie and 
Graphidee, and as regards the fungi among the Spherie; and, as 1 have elsewhere 
repeatedly pointed out, many organisms possess the characters of both lichens and fungi 
to such a degree that it is impossible to determine arbitrarily to which class they are to 
be referred. For at least the provisional reception of such puzzling, but most interesting, 
organisms, I long ago proposed the establishment of an intermediate group of fungo- 
lichens*. 
Function of Spermogones and Pycnidest. 
At present lichenologists and fungologists appear to have come to a vague agreement 
that spermogones are male organs i, the spermatia resembling the spermatozoids $ of 
higher cryptogams in possessing a fertilizing influence on the sporidia; while pycnides 
are to be regarded rather as a secondary form of sporidiiferous conceptacles, whose stylo- 
spores possess the power of germination||. In this case, seeing that pycnides are so 
common among lichens, sometimes more abundant than the primary form of fructifica- 
tion—the apothecia—it may be that, if the spermatia impregnate the sporidia, they may 
also fertilize the stylospores! On the other hand, it has yet to be proved that such 
impregnation is necessary to the germination of either sporidia or stylospores, any 
more than it is to that of lichen-gonidia! Again, spermatia are described as developed 
from their sterigmata by a process of spiculation S; while stylospores arise from their 
basidia by progemmation**. I have seen nothing in the course of my researches proving, 
or tending to prove, a fertilizing influence either on sporidia or stylospores, unless such 
proof is to be found in the topographieal or other interrelations of apothecia, spermo- 
gones and pycnides. Nor have I had any reason to believe in the supplementary spori- 
dioid character of stylospores ascribed to them by Tulasne. On the contrary, their 
morphology would rather lead to the suspicion that whatever be the function or 
relation of the spermogones and spermatia to the apothecia, the same may be that of the 
pyenides and stylospores | As before explained tt, I have not yet given special attention 
to the physiology of spermogones and pycnides—to their functional relation to apothecia 
and gonidia—to the general or special phenomena of Reproduction in lichens; but 
the results of anatomical study are of such a character as at least to throw doubt on 
the correctness of the theories of Tulasne and Nylander, Bayrhoffer, Itzigsohn, and 
other continental authors, who have ventured to express decided opinions on the very 
* «Otago Lichens and Fungi, p.434. Arthonia melaspermella, p. 268. 
t Vide also Summary of the Characters of Spermogones and Pycnides in Royal Society (Edinb.) * Proceedings,’ 
pp. 178, 180, 181. 
t Nylander, Scand. p. 12. 
§ Prof. Balfour, in the glossary appended to his ‘ Physiological Botany’ (1854), p. 1099, defines spermatia to be 
** motionless spermatozoids,” and spermatozoids to be “ moving filaments." There is, however, no such distinction ; as 
I long ago drew attention to the occasional, vivid, Brownian, vibratile, or molecular movements of lichen-spermatia, 
( Vide * British Lichens" (1856), p. 73; and 1st Memoir, pp. 117, 160, 240.) 
| Nylander, Synopsis, p. 43. Vide also my paper on * Polymorphism,” p. 5. 
«| Nylander, Scand. p. 12. Vide also my paper on “ Polymorphism,” p. 5. 
** Ibid. Vide also my paper on “ Polymorphism,” p. 5. 
Tt Vide p.190; and also my paper on “ Polymorphism,” p. 5. 
