OF FILAMENTOUS, FRUTICULOSE, AND FOLIACEOUS LICHENS. 147 
or Parmelia. In the latter species (compressum), the spermogone is frequently a 
mere flattened wart. In both, the spermogones are usually very distinct, from 
the contrast of their colour with the pale gray, or buff-yellow, waxy tint of the 
thallus. Sometimes they are scattered over the under surface, which is paler or 
whiter than the upper, as in some forms of compressum, in which case they are 
still more distinct. The ostiole is generally very minute and imperceptible; but 
frequently also it is large and patent. In the latter case, the spermogone may 
present the appearance of a flattened cone with a depressed apex, or of a brown 
or black ring, as is frequent in compressum. Moreover, in the old state of the 
spermogone, the nucleus sometimes falls out, leaving irregular, saucer-shaped 
cavities. The ramuscles bearing spermogones are generally much more narrow 
and delicate than those bearing apothecia, which latter indeed are not unfre- 
quently fastigiate ér thickened in tenerwm and coralloides. Gentle pressure in a 
drop of water, between glass slides, of one of the spermogones, causes the emission 
of myriads of spermatia, which are minute corpuscles, oblong, rod-shaped, or sub- 
ellipsoid,—generally straight, but sometimes slightly curved ;—they are obtuse at 
the ends, and vary in length from guth to wath, with a breadth of about stoth. 
The sterigmata are short, linear, simple cells, subramose at the base, and of equal 
breadth with the spermatia. They resemble those of Cladonia, and are about 
sath to ith long, with a breadth of s.,th. Sometimes they are composed of 
a few delicate linear cells or articulations. Sometimes intermixed with the 
ordinary spermatiferous sterigmata are numerous elongated, sterile, anastomosing 
filaments, resembling those of Ramadina. The spermogonal envelope is usually 
of a brown cellular tissue. Link makes a very careless and improper use of the 
term “ Sporangium,” as applied to the reproductive organs of Sphwrophoron, a 
term which is usually applied only to the spore cases of Ferns and Mosses. He 
evidently refers to the apothecia rather than to the spermogones, when he says,— 
“ Constat sporangium e thecis appositis, parallelis, ut in Opegrapha, aliisque quee 
tamen fatiscunt et indumentum pulveraceum quo distinguitur constituunt.’’* 
The figure he gives is, moreover, very bad and unlike nature. 
SPECIES 1. S. coralloides, Pers., 
Which has a wide geographical range, being found in Europe, Northern America, 
the Antarctic Regions, and the Canary Islands. TuLAsNE seems to have been 
singularly unsuccessful in discovering the spermogones of this species, which he 
describes as similar, in site and structure, to those of S. compressum. They are, 
in almost all the specimens examined by myself, solitary and apical, large and 
cone-like, while those of compressum, according to my observations, are lateral, 
grouped, flattened, and irregular. 
“* « De Spherophori Sporangio Observatio.” By H. F. Linx, p. 465, Plate xi., fig. 2, 
* Linnea,” vol. vii, Berlin, 1832. 
