SYMB0L2E LICHENO-MYCOLOGICJE. 
75 
by Dr. Minks will prove a most fallacious one, and will only tend 
to render the line of demarkation between these two closely allied 
classes still more uncertain and perplexing than it hitherto has 
been. Gonidia are sufficiently conspicuous objects to catch the eye 
of the least experienced observer and form a comparatively easy 
criterion by which to detect a lichen from a fungus ; but micro- 
gonidia, which do not always indicate their presence by their green 
colour, must be a very uncertain guide to the student in determin- 
ing the true alliance of the plant he is examining. In this book 
170 species are enumerated and briefly described, some few of 
which are already recognised by authors as lichens, but the large 
majority of which have hitherto been accepted as Discomycetes , the 
whole of which he transfers to lichens. It is quite impossible to 
follow the author, in this necessarily brief notice, into the investi- 
gation of individual species and the ground on which he would 
remove the whole into the Class Lichens, but it is difficult to avoid 
the expression of some surprise to find such species as Peziza 
flammea, A. & S., P. corticalis , Pers., P. calycina , Schum., P. 
tricolor , Sow., forced into so unnatural an alliance. 
The commonest of these well-known species, P. calycina , Schum., 
is said by our author to have in its paraphyses the small micro- 
gonidia which are easily recognised and also counted ; it will be in 
the pow r er, therefore, of any one to satisfy himself as to what 
bodies are meant by him which are henceforth to constitute the 
line of demarcation. The greater proportion of the examples he 
has selected from the Discomycetes are, it is confessed, such as have 
always held a more or less doubtful position when tested by the old 
criterion, and here no great violence is done to our notions of 
classification, but it is altogether otherwise with such species as 
those mentioned above. The genera from which his 170 examples 
are drawn are the following : — Ascobolus, Aulographum, Blitndium , 
Cenangium , Cryptomyces , Dermatea , Discella, Ditiola, Dothiora , 
Durella , Eustegia , Excipula, Heteropatella, Heterosphceria, Hymno- 
bolus, Hysterium, Labrella , Lachnella, Lecanidion , Lecidea , Ncetro- 
cymbe, Nodularia , Odontotrema, Patellaria , Pezicida, Peziza , Pelti 
dium, Phacidium, Podophacidium, Pragmophora, Pyrenostegia, Peti- 
nocyclus , Sphceria, Triblidium, Tympanis, Trochila. — W. P. 
LECTUKES ON THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
We have received a volume with this title, by Dr. Wm. Woolls, 
and published in Sydney, but the only cryptogams which receive 
notice are the “ Ferns,” and these, in common with Phanerogams, 
are outside the sphere of our activities. It is a popular volume, 
dealing chiefly with the aspects of the Vegetable World in Aus- 
tralia, and doubtless will be of considerable interest to the colonist. 
Popular botanical works, written by those* who are practically 
acquainted with the subject, are not so common but that we may 
afford a half-dozen lines to welcome them whenever they appear. 
