(78) 
Synalissa, Mass., a separate and higher place. It is yet to be remarked, 
for what it may be worth, that this would be to make much more 
here of the confusion of cortex and meduila in a general cellulose texture 
(parenchyma) than we are at all able to do either in Pannaria or Lepto- 
gium; and that Synalissa (Mass.) if we remove it from the place assigned to 
it by Nylander, must, in the end, fallinto Omphataria, or vice versa. Nor 
isthisall. Should Enchylium affine, scarcely seeming to differ, as Koerber 
has remarked, from Psorotichia, (or Pyrenopsis) save in its polysporous 
thekes, prove yet, as plainly intimated by Nylander (Bot. Zeit. 1.c.) to be 
rather associable with Omphalaria, we may anticipate a still greater 
reduction of genera, and our three groups of inferior Collemei disappear 
in one; itself no less resolvable into Collema. 
So long as Collemaceous Lichens were regarded as distinct in order, it 
was easy to overestimate the value of the persistently undeveloped 
apothecium not seldom exhibited by the lower types, as if this afforded 
evidence of a division analogous to Angiocarpi, in true Lichens. But 
the ordinal separation once given up, the great bulk of the groups in- 
cluded falls back, at once, into Parmeliacei; and retrograde or inexpli- 
cate members must be considered from the new point of view. Only the 
presupposition of an ordinal difference, it is likely, has made it possible 
for lichenographers to accept at all of such constructions as Obryzum, 
Wallr.;+ and Nylander, the latest writer who has reviewed all that is 
known of Collemeine vegetation, appears ( Sy.) nowhere else to recognize 
Verrucariaceous structure, excepting only in his Phylliscum. And even 
this type, — whatever indications of fabric approaching that of the family 
before us may prove to occur in lichens undoubtedly Verrucariaceous, and 
the modification of the gonidia which should seem to be at the bottom of 
Collemaceous anomalies is not confined to the tribe in which it has its 
fullest development, —is, it will scarcely be denied, really Collemeine; 
and to be judged therefore from this, that is from a Parmeliaceous stand- 
point. Nor, as respects the crustaceous groups of Collemei, immediately 
in hand, the often inexplicate apothecia of which assume now the port of 
1 We hare here (Massal. Ita?.n. 138. Rabenh. Lich. Eur. n. 128) in point of 
fact, the thallus of a Leptogium, not to be distinguished from L. palmatum (Huds.) 
Mont. (Moug. & Nestl. Cr. Vog. n. 1058) at least in an infertile condition, except 
that in place of the normal apothecia are found, (it is important to observe, rarely) 
certain ‘ angiocarpous’ or ‘ endocarpeine’ ones, not reconcilable with those of the 
species, and shewing no reaction with iodine. ‘You might almost say,” remarks 
Nylander, “that the apothecia and spermogones of some foreign species, dwelling 
parasitically in the thallus of this Leptogium, constituted Obryzum.” (Syn. p. 136). 
According to Tulasne, who has especially illustrated Obryzum corniculatum (Mém. 
sur les Lich. p. 46, t. 6) a minute Spheria infests the thallus of Collema melenum; 
and he suggests that such parasite, occurring on the thallus of Collema, may not 
impossibly explain Thrombium bacillare, Wallr., now referred by Koerber (Parerg. 
p. 444) doubtfully, to Obryzum. (Tul. 1. ¢. p. 178). 
