NEW BRITISH HEPATIC.E. 
4 5 
library, are extremely unlike our present plant, and especially as 
this species, in consequence of the paucity of its flowers, has been 
thought, by another eminent botanist, deserving of a name directly 
the reverse in its meaning, that of J. pauc flora, I have considered 
it best to do away with an appellation which can only tend to mis- 
lead, and to substitute in its room the very appropriate one of 
Weber. It is, indeed, merely in compliance with the opinion of 
preceding botanists, and contrary to my own, that I here refer to 
the Dillenian figure, which appears most like a very common 
appearance of J. bicuspidata, and was considered by Weber so 
doubtful that he quotes it under J. setacea with a mark of uncer- 
tainty. I was in hopes of ascertaining the fact by examining the 
specimen corresponding with the number in the Dillenian herbarium, 
but, to my great disappointment, what is there preserved is an 
injured morsel of J. connivens, Dicks, a plant to which neither 
the figure nor description bears the smallest resemblance ! ” — 
B.C. 
ON THE IMPORTANCE THAT SHOULD BE ATTACHED 
TO THE DEHISCENCE OF ASCI IN THE 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE DISCOMYCETES. 
By Monsieur E. Boudier.* 
The discovery of the mode of dehiscence of the Asci in the Dis- 
comycetes is of recent date. Leveille in the article Peziza in the 
Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle de D’Orbigny, confessed he had 
never seen it, and it is to M. M. Cronan that we owe the first 
observations on the subject. These gentlemen saw clearly the 
operculum in the Ascoboli, and in some neighbouring species, but 
said they had never met with it in other Pezizae. They also made 
it the special character of Ascobolus, and joined some species of the 
neighbouring genera amongst which they had observed it. More 
recently, in their “ Florule du Finistere,” in 1867, they imperfectly 
saw another mode of dehiscence in Lecanidium atrum (=Patellaria 
atrata Fr.), but they described it badly, for the sporidia, in all the 
Pezizae, are discharged at the same time. The observations of 
these scientific men rested here, and they did not attach sufficient 
importance to their discovery. 
Since this period, in 1869, in my “ Memoir sur les Ascoboles,” I 
have pointed out the fact that this group was not the only one in 
which the asci may be provided with an operculum, and that this 
mode of dehiscence was to be met with in Pezizae of the sections 
* Read before the members of the Woolhope Field Club, at Hereford, 
Oct. 2, 1879. Translated by W. Phillips, F.L.S. 
