( 264) 
amphithecium is almost always colourless, as in Segestria, and so described 
by Nylander (Pyrenoc. p. 86) but Verruc. quintaria of this author (in 
Prodr. Fl. N. Gran. p. 115) a Japanese lichen, scarcely indeed differs (the 
spores proving to be at length 7-8-locular) from Sagedia olivacea (Borr.) 
except in the blackening of the interior exciple. The capillary paraphyses 
are certainly a distinct feature in Sagedia, Koerb., and relied upon, in 
their dispositions of the group, by the other authors named; but the little 
dependence really to be put upon this character is indicated in Pyrenula 
§ Arthopyrenia, where P. punctiformis, v. fallac, Nyl., with well-marked 
parapbyses, is inseparable specifically from other forms in which these 
organs are all but deficient. And even the generally lanceolate outline 
of the thekes of our group ceases now (as in 5. illinita, Koerb., Zw. exs. 
n. 36, and 5. lactea, Koerb., Zw. exs.n. 44) to be always available. There 
remains then, and the remark is equally true of Verrucariaand Pyrenula, 
nothing but the spores upon which to predicate generical difference; and 
even here we are embarrassed, in the case of the two genera last named, 
by the fact that both belong to the same (typically coloured) series, and 
offer only different expressions of the same spore-type. Not so, if we do 
not mistake, with Sagedia ; the spores of which are always colourless, 
and proved to be typically so, and to belong therefore to the colourless 
series, by their final, unequivocal exhibition (in an American lichen, as in 
another from Japan) of the acicular type. 
There are but few indications of this type in the Verrucariacei, and 
most of the lichens distinguished by it, are perhaps closely akin. Thus 
Verrucaria gibba, Nyl. Prodr. p. 185 (Sarcopyrenia, Ny]. Pyrenoc. p. 69) 
seems, so far at least as the descriptions extend, to be scarcely separable 
but by the obsolescence of the paraphyses. Leptorhaphis Beckhausiana, 
Lahm (Koerb. Parerg. p. 386) also a rock-lichen, the acicular spores of 
which are contained in ‘fusiform’ thekes, differs in the same way; and 
may carry with it to Sagedia the other species of Leptorhaphis, growing 
only on bark; these last appearing to be clearly distinguishable from 
Pyrenua § Arthopyrenia, if in nothing else, in their spore-type; and 
only to differ from Sagedia in the imperfect paraphyses. It seems on the 
whole unlikely that so degenerate a cluster of Pyrenule as is brought 
together in Arthopyrenia, Massal., should possess saxicoline members; 
and Koerber himself indicates that the spores of his A. saxicola (Parerg. 
p. 387) agree rather with those of Sagedia; while neither the obsolete- 
ness of the paraphyses nor the variation of the thekes (as see above) 
are perhaps enough to distinguish it. And finally it were to be expected, 
if the group, as thus hypothetically conceived, is found a natural one, 
that species referable to it, but differenced by other modifications of the 
spore-type, should offer themselves: Lithospheria, Beckh. (Koerb. Parerg. 
p. 344) a rock-lichen, with much elongated, ‘ obliquely biclavate, nebu- 
lous-monoblastish’ spores in ‘fusiform-cylindraceous’ thekes, may not 
impossibly prove better associable with Sagedia than with Verrucaria. 
Sy 
