OP CEYLON AND INDIA. 
381 
imnsually good examples of single plants, and show the 
general form and lobing of the thallns in a way that is very 
uncommon in most places, owing to the way in which the 
thalli grow over one another, and to the frequent formation 
of secondary growing points from broken or otherwise 
injured parts. The rocks are covered with an irregular 
crustaceous coating of dry easily-powdered thallus, gray to 
white in colour, and with numerous short-stalked ribbed 
fruits standing erect upon it, the stalks emerging from little 
prostrate shoots of scale leaves on the thallus. Each pros- 
trate shoot has a terminal boat-shaped spathe, splitting along 
the upper margin, just as in the preceding species, and as can 
be cl early seen in t he photograph. The thallus has an irregular 
lobed mar gin, towards which the secondary shoots point; they 
thus often, in very irregular portions, seem to point all 
ways, and many of the artists of this plant have consequently 
supposed the direction to be perfectly random, and have 
produced very misleading pictures. The plant in the lower 
left-hand corner of the plate shows clearly that the growth 
of the thallus must have been from a common centre as in 
Lawia. 
If we examine at this period the plants which are still 
submerged, we shall find that the thallus is green, olive, or 
reddish in colour, with delicate margins, which are very 
often more or less decayed or disorganized, especially in the 
Indian forms. It is, as a rule, very hard to find specimens 
showing any such regularity as that exhibited by those in 
the figures, and this may account for the extreme inaccuracy 
and misunderstanding of most descriptions of this plant. 
The submerged thallus will be found to bear leaves, but these 
of course soon fall when exposed, and hence the herbarium 
specimens are leafiess and the plant is described as such, 
even by those who have collected it alive. The leaves in 
falling leave the scars of the secondary shoot upon the 
thallus, as can be clearly seen in the photograph. Most of 
the secondary shoots, however, have formed fioral buds by 
this time and the leaf tips have fallen. 
