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reverting thus towards higher groups, connects itself fairly with them, 
and with the Class. 
The family Spherophorei includes, according to Nylander (Syn. p. 169) 
five species, in two genera. One of these genera (Acroscyphus) is com- 
mon to Mexico and the Himalaya. The other (Spherophorus) is north- 
ern and austral; two of its forms extending however within the tropics. 
We possess the three northern species. —— Siphula, Fr., is not without 
points of approach to Spherophorus, and is here, provisionally, prefixed 
to the latter; but its fructification is unknown.——Of the Caliciet, as 
here taken, about sixty marked, or specific forms, are reckoned by recent 
authors; the whole, and including also in this the Spherophorei, being 
referable to the coloured spore-series. The Caliciet are mainly northern ; 
but the number of forms inhabiting intertropical and austral regions (at 
present about one sixth of the whole) will probably hereafter be increased. 
Fam. I.—SPHHROPHOREI. 
Thallus verticalis, fruticulosus. 
*SIPHULA, Fr. 
Fr. L. E. p. 406. Nyl. Syn. p. 261; Lich. Scand. p.67. Th. Fr. Lich. 
Arct. p. 31; Gen. p. 113. Stizenb. Beitr. 1. c. p. 175. 
Apothecia (ignota). Spermatia ‘linearia.”  Thallus fruticulosus, 
teretiusculus, parce ramosus, basi quasi radicatus, intus stuppeus. 
S. ceratites (Wahl.) Fr., upon which the genus was constituted, is an 
alpine and arctic lichen, compared by Wahlenberg, and Acharius, with 
Cladonia gracilis, v. taurica ; but decisively distinguished by its solid 
thallus. It occurs in islands of Behring’s Straits (Mr. Wright).—— 
S. simplex (Tayl.) Nyl. (Dufourea, Tayl. New Lich. 1. c. p. 185) from the 
west coast of North America (Menzies) is scarcely to be distinguished, by 
the description, from S. ceratites ; and is admitted by Nylander (Sym.) to 
be ‘perhaps only a more simple variety’ of the latter. The place of the 
genus, which Nylander has increased by the addition of five other, more 
or less related, but likewise sterile lichens, is uncertain; but S. Pickeringii, 
Tuck. in Bot. Wilkes exp. p. 124, t. 4, from the Sandwich islands, appeared, 
in a single specimen not now within reach but sufficiently exhibited in the 
cited figure, to offer something not at all unlike the thalline conceptacles 
of Spherophorus. And though no trace of a proper exciple, or its 
equivalent, which should illuminate further the curious conformation of 
the thallus referred to, was detected in this specimen, there is no doubt 
that S. ceratites is comparable, as well anatomically as in respect to habit, 
with the genus next following. 
