1894. ] Notes on Myxomycetes, 399 
Licea minima Fr. 
This obscure and little known species has an interesting 
developmental history. _ 
he sporangia of the American, like those of the European 
specimens, vary in color greatly. All, except one, of several 
gatherings from various American localities examined by the 
writer were of various shades of chestnut or umber brown. 
In the exception, the color of the sporangial wall was dull 
black by reflected light, but dark reddish brown or black by 
transmitted light. 
The upper surface of the sporangia in all of the gatherings, 
was divided by seams or ridges into from four to six parts. 
In the brown specimens these seams were of a darker brown 
than the adjacent parts, but in the black specimens they were 
jet black, smooth and shining. They extend from the base 
to the center of the surface of the sporangia when of the usual 
depressed hemispherical form, but to a short central or apical 
tidge when the sporangia are elongated. These ridges are 
Sutural in character and mark the lines of the rupture of the 
sporangia upon the dispersion of the spores. The rupture 
takes place through the middle of the sutures and the result- 
ing segments of the sporangial wall become partly reflexed, 
thus giving a serrated margin to the cup-like sporangial cav- 
ity left by the scattered spores. : 
The location of these sutures is indicated early in the devel- 
°pment and differentiation of the sporangia from the plas- 
modium. 
This fact the writer was able to verify while bering. pe 
it interesting development of the sporangia of the blac 
orm, 
When found, the plasmodium had just entered the first 
“tage of differentiation and had formed cushion-shaped masses 
of a uniform dull yellow color, probably two and three times 
the diameter of the mature sporangia. 
and maturation advanced, the plasmodi 
“orrespondingly in size, and in the smoot 
a Sutures characterizing the mature sporang! 
“‘entiate, first as double rows of minute dark 
pigment Points which gradually grew larger 
nally blended, forming black shiny s sat ier 
f ile the sutures were developing, the whole payer} nally 
“ce also changed from yellow to dark garnet, 4 
