WHAT IS LICHENOrSIS ? 
95 
soon falling out and leaving a cup-shaped hollow. - This 
hymenium is a compact mass of long cylindrical asci, mixed 
with paraphyses, the tips of which are pyriform and coloured. 
The sporidia are filiform, the length of the ascns (150-160 y) 
multiseptate and hyaline, as in Schmitzomia. Making allowance 
for the inferior microscopes at the time when this description 
was constructed, as well as the slight care bestowed upon 
microscopical characters, it is not unreasonable to suppose 
that the coloured tips of the paraphyses were interpreted by 
Schweinitz as the spores, and the septate hyaline sporidia as 
the long septate basidia. This view is strengthened by a 
comparison of the figures, given with the description, and the 
fructification of the Schweinitzian specimen. No one has seen 
a specimen corresponding with the description as interpreted 
by Saccardo ; and yet the species, as represented by the 
specimen alluded to, has . several times been found in the 
United States. We infer, therefore, that Lichenopsis sphcero- 
boloides is the Stictiform Discomycete published in Uavenal’s 
“Carolina Fungi” (iii., No. 72), resembling, if not congeneric 
with Schmitzomia. And, further, that the description drawn up 
by Schweinitz was imperfect and misleading through a wrong 
interpretation of the facts. Hence the genus Lichenopsis , as a 
genus of Spheeropsoid Fungi, is untenable, and should bo re- 
garded as a spurious, or, at the very least, a very doubtful genus. 
The third interpretation, as already stated, is based upon 
specimens which have the external appearance of the Schwein- 
itzian specimen, but with different fruit. In this the asci are 
also cylindrical, but broader, and contain eight large cylindrical 
sporidia (120-135 X 15-17 /x) divided transversely by numerous 
septa, each cell so formed being at length longitudinally divided, 
so that the entire sporidium is muriform and hyaline. At 
complete maturity the joints separate, as figured by Berkeley 
in the sporidia of Platygrapha magnifica (“ Annals of Natural 
History,” Yol. xiv., t. 5, fig. 26 C). 
This pseudo-Lichenopsis would, but for the longitudinal 
division of the cells, rank with Berkeley’s Platygrapha magnifica , 
wdiich, by-the-bye, is entirely out of place in Platygrapha , has 
nothing in common with the genus Platygrapha as recognized 
by Montague, and, in our opinion, is entitled to rank with 
fungi, and not with Lichens. With this impression, therefore, 
we are disposed to place these two fungi in a distinct genus of 
Sticticei under the name of — 
PLATYSTICTA, n.g. Erumpens, orbicularis, urceolatis, 
marginatis ; disco plus minus decedente. Sporidiis magnis, 
hyalinis, pluriseptatis vel muriformibus, dissilientibus. 
* Sporidiis pluriseptatis. 
Platysticta magnifica (J5. fy Bri). Platygrapha magnifica , 
B. & Br. Ceylon Fungi, No. 973 e, t. 5, fig. 26. 
