90 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



(fig. 19). The clavate asci sometimes appeared somewhat truncate 

 (fig. 21); paraphyses very inconspicuous — indeed I am more inclined 

 to think there were none ; the asci were densely crowded. Many ex- 

 amples showed asci filled with granular contents, the spores not yet 

 formed. The asci when mature were 8-spored (fig. 22), the spores 

 resemhling in size and figure (but were veiy slightly longer than) those 

 of the second form of Scytonema referred to, but they differed in not hav- 

 ing the two blight corpuscles immersed therein, and in showing a pale 

 green colour. They were long and narrow-lanceolate, greenish ; length, 

 ^", breadth, -^" (fig. 23). 



ISiiO ' ' 7000 \ O J' 



The last foiTQ which rewarded my search in showing apothecia was 

 the form recorded in " Flora Hibemica " as StiyonemamamiUosum, but 

 the distinction which may exist between the plant in question and 

 Stiyonema mammiferum, Thwaites, or Sirosiphon coralloides, Kiitz., are 

 not very apparent. Our plant grows in running water, attached to 

 stones at the bottom of mountain streams. It is much more rare, 

 seemingly, than any of the previous species, and is a very pretty plant 

 under a moderate power of the microscope, especially a young and 

 flourishing one, studded by the curious short and blunt branches, 

 giving the " mamillate " appearance, with the phycochromaceous con- 

 tents bright in colour. The apothecia resembled those in the Siro- 

 siphon above alluded to ; they were blackish, globose (fig. 24) ; para- 

 physes linear, somewhat longer than the asci (fig. 25) ; spores four in 

 an ascus, greenish, uniseptate, oblong, the septum appearing like a 

 pale and hyaKne slender transverse band, and somewhat constricted 

 at the middle opposite the septum : thus the halves ovate, somewhat 

 tapering to the bluntly-rounded ends, each cavity showing a bright- 

 corpuscle immersed in it ; length, 1^^', breadth j^" (fig. 26). 



In all these forms I searched as well as I could for so-called sper- 

 raogonia, but was unable to detect any. These are comparatively so 

 readily perceived in Ephehe (I myself found them before I was aware 

 of Bomet's published account of them, or of the apothecia in that plant) 

 that my non-success was the more disappointing. 



Nor, after many trials by boiling in caustic potash, was I able to 

 satisfy myself of the presence of hyphae, as can be so readily done in 

 Ephebe, as first pointed out by Schwendener ; there can, however, be 

 little reasonable doubt but that they must exist, though the seeming 

 nascent apothecia in the second form of Scytonema referred to gave no 

 indication of their presence ; but that in itself would prove nothing, as 

 the hypha cannot be seen in Epheie without boiling in potash. Most 

 probably my experiments were not conducted sufiiciently long or care- 

 fully, for Bornet has shown the existence of the hyphie in his Spilo- 

 nema paradoxum,'^ and in his Lichenosphceria Lenormandi .] 



* Dr. E. Bomet : " Description de Trois Licliens Xouveaux," in " Memoires de 

 la Soc. Imp. de Cherbourg," vol. iv., p. 225, t. i., ii. 



t Dr. E. Bomet: " Eecherches sur les Gonidies des Lichens," in "Ann. des 

 Sci. Naturelles," ' o ser., tome xxii., (of reprint, p. 57). 



