RECENT OBSERVATIONS OF OR. NICANORE ON SCHWENOENE&ISM. 6l 
of the table : “ Des groupes de cellules, dont quelques-unes seule- 
ment, plus grosses que les autres, contiennent de la chlorophylle et 
des filaments, sur lesquels ces cellules ont pris naissance ” (Cfr. 
Nyl. Fueg., p.32-33). 
The same I have formerly declared (Flora, 1885, p. 30) is to 
be observed in the formation of gonimia in the cephalodia of 
some Stercocaula in an analogous condition. The Scliwen- 
denerians attribute a singular intelligence and very subtle 
perspicacity to the germs of lichens, for in these germs, accord- 
ing to their opinion, there is inherent a faculty of selecting 
special “algae,” which they may be found surrounding, attract- 
ing and introducing into their textures that they may become 
gonidict. And as each lichen has its own proper gonidic type, 
it follows that there is need of a marvellous subtilty and judg- 
ment that that sole necessary type be not mixed up with 
another, and that in its place there be not admitted another incon- 
gruous “algal.’* But “ majora canamus,” the gonidic adult 
lichen, would rejoice in a still more subtle diagnostic faculty, for in 
the case of not a few species it would also have set before it the 
seeking out and snatching to itself its own “algal” — not, indeed, 
a gonidiomorphous “ algal ” (for such it already possesses), but 
an additional syngonimic algal, in order that cephalodia may be 
formed, in whose texture there occur gonimia or syngonimia as a 
peculiar anatomical system, composed in certain species by Nostoc , 
in others by Scytonema , and in others by Sirosiphon. (Fries fil., 
in discovering and pathologically explaining the history of these, 
has wonderfully distinguished himself, but vide Nyl. Lapp. Or., p. 
117.) All of these things have, indeed, subtilely to be weighed 
and discerned by the lichen, bringing forth cephalodia, in order that 
there may be no mistake in the selection. Thus, after its first 
infancy, a lichen would seem to have obtained a more acute intelli- 
gence, along with an incomparable shrewdness in subjoining to 
itself, as symbiologists think, algal elements of the same sort. The 
necessary syngonimia upon the ground, on stone, or on bark would 
then be laid hold of by the hyphal tentacles (endowed with a 
magical power) of the lichen there expanded, and would be in- 
truded where a place in the cephalodic fabric was predestined. 
The Schwendenerian fabulists would have it to be so, although 
certainly nobody ever saw, and certainly never will see, anything 
of the kind. But a still graver consideration stands in the way, if 
you set about, explaining in what way those syngonimia come to 
fruticulose lichens. For in this case “ algas” would run to them, 
not from the nearest substratum, but from afar, leaping or flying 
through the air ; every other way, every other method, fails. 
Exotic Stercocaula , often five inches in height, adorned with 
cephalodia in the upper portion of the fruticle, could by no other 
mode, from the substratum or the vicinity, seize or receive these 
“ algals ” in the places of the podetia where they are present ; nor 
have the cephalodia a syngonimiose communication among them- 
