BRITISH HEPATIC^. 



85 



The base of the leaf is generally vaginate and erect, whilst the 

 upper portion is patent, and the lobes project slightly below the 

 line of the carina, which is ill-defined in this species. 



Texture thin and herbaceous, shrinking and crisped when dry. 



Colour sordid green, sub-opaque, chlorophyllose, more rarely 

 ochraceous ; the base of the shoots dirty-brown. 

 • Areolation (f. 27, 7) minute, dotted, the cells resembling >S'. cequi- 

 loba in size and disposition, but with the epidermic layer quite 

 smooth (not papillose). Marginal cells smallest, sub-quadrate, 

 •XTTo" iu diameter ; cells about the upper third of the leafj^g^" 

 ■to ttt" ; basal cells -y^o" by ttfo"- When prepared and tinged 

 with zinc biniodide the walls appear somewhat thickened at the 

 angles, but the combined trigones are very small, less than 3-^00 "■ 

 The younger cells are crowded with minute chlorophyll granules, 

 associated with which we generally find from one to three larger 

 oval granular corpuscules (zellenkorper), like those noted in 

 N. scalaris. In older leaves I have observed the granules (after 

 the leaves had been revived by placing in water), which are fewer 

 and of a brownish colour, revolving within the cell-walls like phy- 

 tozoa. It is difficult to understand this motion in leaves which 

 have been kept in the herbarium for years, yet the phenomenon is 

 not confined to the present species. 



Inflorescence dioicous. 



Involucral bracts somewhat larger and broader, lobes obtuse, 

 the inferior one decurved, whilst the lobule is appressed to the 

 colesule, which it half conceals. 



Colesule (f. 27, 6) oblong from a contracted sub-terete base, 

 about a line in length by -gV' iii diameter, complanate ; apex re- 

 curvate, slightly contracted, obliquely truncate, entire. 



Calyptra obovate, bearing at the apex a slrort style, the walls 

 composed of polygonal hyaline cells, and the base surrounded by a 

 few abortive pistillidia. 



Capsule undescribed. 



Gonidial cells crowning the apex of the growing stem, and 

 attached to the apiculate lobes of the upper leaves ; free cells, 

 collected together in roundish reddish-brown masses, or in a more 

 scattered state, are not unfrequent. Under the microscope their 

 colour is golden-brown, and their form oval or clavate, the cell- 

 contents being divided by a central septa. 



Obs. — *S^. Ba/rtlingii adds another item to the list of rarities, which have made 

 Bolton woods classical ground to the cryptogamic botanist. But pleasant as the 

 place must always be to me, I can no longer visit it with the unalloyed gladness of 

 old days. Those ancient woods are haunted by the shades of friends who are now 

 no more, and the murmur of the Wharfe has lost its old jubilance, and sounds like 

 a dirge. On my last visit to this spot in May, 1868, my companion was the late 

 €r. E. Hunt, of Bowden, one of the most earnesb and promising bryologists it has been 



