116 NORTH AMERICAN SORDARIACEAE 
Cultivated specimens: On rabbit dung, Gunnison, Col., Aug. 
1899 (Bartholomew) ; rabbit dung, Decorah, Ja., July 1899 (Hol- 
way). 
The Iowa specimen has spores a little smaller than others, of- 
ten as low as 8x 45y. In all other respects it is identical with 
the Kansas and Colorado specimens. 
The American forms are identical in all respects with those of 
Europe; although the German descriptions vary greatly from 
mine. Itis rather peculiar that so many observers should not 
have detected the real nature of theascus. The ascus was originally 
described, and this error has been copied by others in later years, 
as having a long pedicel approaching in length the spore-bearing 
portion of the ascus. Even Berlese in his Icones as late as 1894 
has figured the ascus in this condition. But Rehm's* specimens 
which were contributed and named by Niessl himself, show no 
such condition. On the contrary the asci when in a normal con- 
dition are very short-stipitate. The long stipe figured by Berlese 
and described by others is simply the old external membrane with 
the base of the expanded internal membrane. This rupture and 
stretching occurs very readily in dry specimens in this species as 
in many others. By allowing the perithecia to remain in iodized 
potassium iodide for a few minutes before rupturing, the asci may 
be studied in their natural condition. That Berlese had another 
plant cannot be maintained because he cites this same specimen 
as the one from which his figures were made. 
I4. SPORORMIA FIMETARIA DeNot. Memorie della R. Accad. delle 
Sci. de Torino, II. 10: 10. 1849 ; Nuovo Gior. Bot. Ital. 0 : 
160. 1878; N. Am. Pyren. 135. 1892 ; Rabenhorst, Krypt.- 
Flora, خر‎ 187. 1887; Berlese, Icones Fungorum, 1: AX. 37. 
74. 1894; Saccardo Syll. Fung. 3: 132, 1883; Cobn's 
Krypt.-Flora, 3°: 393. 1894. 
Sphaeria fimetaria Rabenh. Herb. Mycol. (Ed. I.) no. 1733 
prop.t 
Perithecia scattered, sunken beneath the thin upper crust of 
the substratum through which the upper wall of the perithecium 
a Rehm’s Ascomyceten, no. 748. 
T Not seen. 
