(228) 
and of a metallic lustre, then a narrow white line, encompassing a brown- 
ish less solid core.”! The description is from S. globiferus, but applies as 
well to S. fragilis and S. compressus, and is the typical structure of the 
genus. Montagne (Recherch., sur la struct. du nucl. des Spheroph., &c., 
in Ann. 2, 15, p. 146, t. 15, f. 1) has quite omitted to notice the ‘brown 
core’; which might well have qualified his explanation of the shape of 
the outer layer of the ‘nucleus’ by ‘“wne saillie hémisphérique de la 
couche medullaire ou centrale du thalle, représentant une sorte de torus.” 
For, passing the question of origin, this globular, brown core is at least a 
part of the apothecium, and in fact the base of it; and may therefore 
prove properly comparable, as, if I do not greatly mistake, it is compar- 
able, with the hypothecium of the Caliciei. We find in Acolizwm, which, 
as here taken, includes all the highest Calicieine types, and bridges in fact 
the at first startling interval between at length athalline Calicium and 
fruticulose Acroscyphus, no little diversity in the proportions as well as 
in the differentiation of the envelopes and internal parts of the fruit. 
Even the proper exciple is in this way reduced, in those species in which 
the apothecium is directly conditioned by the thallus, and becomes (in A. 
tigillare, A. ocellatum, Koerb., A. Californicum, &c.) a thin, and finally 
disappearing line ; while its similarly varying hypothecium is sometimes 
peculiarly incrassated. In an apothecium of the Californian A. Bolanderi 
now before me, the hypothecium, instead of exhibiting, as commonly, a 
more or less lunate outline, is hemispherical, and, being bordered by the 
narrow line of the white layer, and conditioning similarly to Spheropho- 
rus the shape of the spore-mass, fairly counterfeits, if it does not also 
explain, the peculiarities of the latter.> Under the microscope, the hyme- 
nium of this last is seen moreover to take its departure from the white 
layer, precisely as in Acolium ; and the relations of the same layer to the 
‘brown core’ or hypothecium, offer no appreciable differences. 
But, if we admit that the extraordinary apothecium of Spherophorus 
is determined by its nucleiform hypothecium, and that, this being assumed 
to be explainable from the point of view of Acoliwm, there is nothing left 
to exclude the former from Caliciacei, it is still to be remarked that such 
abnormal reduction of the exciple is here normal; and that it is only as 
an extreme deformation of the tribal type, and because there is, from our 
standpoint, in which the fruit is primary, no other place for the genus, 
that it can be accepted as a member of the Tribe before us. 
Very much less questionable is Acroscyphus, where the whole struc- 
Compare the figures in Leighton’s Brit. Angiocarpous Lichens (1, f. 1-3) and 
Tulasne l. c. (t. 15, f. 2, 3). 
* Compare Nylander’s figure of the Pilophorus-fruit (Syn. t. 7, f. 6). We have 
here, as in Spherophorus, and the case noted in Acolium, a certain extreme of 
anamorphosis. Is it entirely without bearing on the question of anamorphosis in 
Omphataria, considered above, especially at p. 84? 
